09/02/2026
Παγκόσμια Ημέρα Ελληνικής Γλώσσας 🇬🇷💙
Greek Language in history
1. Language is a carrier of culture, an ark of values, concepts, identity, an instrument of expression and creation, and a bridge of communication, understanding and consensus.
Among the thousands of languages, Greek combines four particularly significant characteristics:
(a) An unbroken continuity of 40 centuries of oral tradition and 35 centuries of written tradition, if we take into account the Linear B script, or at least 28 centuries of written tradition, if we limit ourselves to the alphabetic script, which makes Greek the longest continuously spoken and written language in Europe. As the poet Giorgos Seferis said during his Nobel Prize Banquet speech in 1963: “Greek language has never ceased to be spoken. It has undergone the changes that all living things experience, but there has never been a gap.”
(b) A highly elaborated structure as a language (vocabulary, grammar and syntax), due to its use by unparalleled historical figures of literature, poetry, theatre, philosophy, politics and science, such as Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Thucydides, Hippocrates, Archimedes and the Fathers of the Church.
(c) A widespread presence in many languages, as, over time, Greek has been one of the most important languages in terms of its influence on all other European languages and, through them, in the world of languages. Moreover, the particular significance of the Greek language is clearly confirmed by the fact that it is taught internationally both in its ancient form in Classical Studies chairs around the world and in its medieval (Byzantine) and modern form in Medieval and Modern Greek Language chairs worldwide.
(d) The Greek language was and remains to this day an inexhaustible source of international scientific terminology, especially in medicine, but also in mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering, astronomy, quantum mechanics, social sciences and humanities.
This is an internationally recognized feature of Greek, which is clearly documented, based on empirical and historical data.
2. As the linguistic cradle of basic concepts of culture, science and philosophy, Greek holds, by historical and objective criteria, a distinct place among the languages of the world.
3. Awareness of the phonological structure of the Greek language led the Greeks of the eighth century BCE to innovate in the consonant-based Phoenician alphabet by inventing vowels, thus achieving the creation of a new vocalic alphabet through the transition from a writing system based on consonants to one where every sound, every phoneme is represented by a letter. In other words, there is a one-to-one correlation. In this way, with just a few letters (24) an infinite number of words can be denoted in writing.
4. The discovery of the alphabet 2,800 years ago represents a true cultural revolution that decisively influenced the course of human civilization and history. This explains why one of the world’s greatest thinkers, the Italian Galileo Galilei, considered the Greek alphabet to be “man’s greatest discovery”.
5. During the post-classical Hellenistic period, Greek had been for six whole centuries the first international language, the transactional language of many different peoples (lingua franca) and, at the same time, a culture language (Kultursprache).
The Greek language blossomed during the reign of Alexander the Great, it was accepted and embraced by the Roman civilization which adopted the Greek script in the form of the Latin alphabet, it was globalized through the influenced the course of human civilization and history.
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000393236
