Philological information on "Greek" was prepared by the translation studies division of Dijital Tercüme.
 
Greek, or in its Greek name Ellinika, has a 4,000-year-old history. As a result, over the course of history, it was influenced by the languages of many countries and has gone through changes over time. There are major differences between Ancient Greek and contemporary Greek. It is the official language of the Hellenic Republic (located on the south of the Balkan Peninsula, bordered by Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria in the north, Turkey in the east, the Aegean Sea in the southeast, the Mediterranean Sea in the south and the Adriatic Sea in the west) and Southern Cyprus. It emerged in the 10th century BC. It is based on the Phoenician alphabet. The reading direction has changed over time, initially it was read from right to left, then in a style called “boustrophedon," and finally from left to right. Oldest known documents are the laws of the Greek city state Dreros from the 8th century BC.
 
Greek is the native language of 25 million people in the world, many of whom live in Greece (10 million), but also in Australia, Germany, and United States.
About 1,000 people, whose native language is Greek, reside in Turkey. Additionally, Greek is spoken in Italy, Albania, Armenia and Ukraine. There are also speakers in the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Russia, Romania, Georgia, Azerbaijan and throughout the Mediterranean in South Italy, Israel, Egypt, and Lebanon. Greek is also spoken by immigrants in Western Europe, especially in England, Germany, Canada, the United States of America, Australia, as well as in countries such as Argentine and Brazil.
There are Greek words in all world languages in fields such as, mathematics, astronomy, democracy, philosophy, theater, athletics, discourse, anthropology, photography, isomery, bio-mechanics, cinema, physics, etc. Especially words ending in "-logy" are mostly from Greek origins. For example, about 12% of the words in English are derived from Greek.
 
Due to our relation as neighbors (commercial, tourism, cultural, etc.) "Greek language and literature" departments in Turkish universities are fairly popular. Greek has always been in use and is one of the oldest languages. It is one of the few languages that has produced significant literary work in all periods of history. Greek's contribution to civilization, especially to Western and Middle Eastern civilizations has been enormous, and it is one of the most historically significant languages. Therefore, Greek's influence is very common in scientific, philosophic, and artistic terminologies, as well as other world languages.
 
In the archaic period, writing irregularities and disorder in Greek stands out. As a result of this, each region's and city state's first alphabets show major differences. These differences are so distinct that, where an archaic inscription comes from can easily be determined. The Greek alphabet of the archaic period showed a lot of local differences. For this reason, Athenians in 403/2 BC accepted the Ionian alphabet officially and reached unison in writing. Ancient Greek writing used 24 letters.
 
Before adopting and changing to the Phoenician alphabet, Greeks used two writing systems. The first one, which was called "Linear A", was a pictographic writing consisting of 76 syllabic images. Linear A was used around the whole Aegean Sea region from 1700 BC to 1400 BC. Between 1680 BC and 1580 BC it was replaced by "Linear B". However, in the end they adopted the Phoenician alphabet that fit the language better. Greeks changed the Phoenician alphabet, adapting it to their own language. In the Phoenician alphabet, they kept some of the consonants that phonetically fit their language, and assigned vowel sounds to some of the consonants they did not use. Most of the Indo-European languages modeled the Greek alphabet in creating their own alphabets. According to philologists Greek is analyzed under 6 main headings:
 
Proto-Greek: The language spoken in Greece in 2000 BC.
Mycenaean Greek: The language that was discovered on the tablets left from the Mycenaean civilization. Historically, it was used starting from the 15th or 14th century BC.
Ancient Greek: The language used by Ancient Greek civilizations in Archaic and Classical periods. Its most widespread use was seen in the Roman Empire. It was spoken in Archaic (9-6th centuries BC), Classical (5-4th centuries BC) and Hellenic (6-3th centuries BC) periods. It is a sum of dialects spoken on both sides of the Aegean Sea after the Doric invasion.
Koine (common) Greek: It was spoken in Eastern Mediterranean and Near East. In the Hellenistic Period started by Alexander the Great, Greek became a second native language in almost all conquered lands. In the Hellenistic Koine era, significant changes to Greek were made in terms of words, pronunciation and grammar in attempts to construct a common language. This rapid change was initiated by Alexander the Great. Starting from the mid-4th century BC, the Attic dialect was accepted as the common literary language. When Alexander carried this language to the east as result of his conquests, the language's purity was lost. Moreover, the creation of a new language was necessary for official, administrative, commercial and literary reasons. The language that was constructed under these circumstances is called the common dialect (Koine). Later, when Alexandria became the center of Greek literature, a new dialect emerged, which was a broken version of the Attic dialect. Finally, during the Byzantine period, a Byzantine dialect emerged and from this, the language that we call Pontic Greek was born. The literary circles of the period opposed Koine Greek and advised works to be written in Ancient Greek. It is very significant historically as it was used in the New Testament of the Bible. At the end of antiquity, Hellenistic Greek was spoken on a very large geography, from Macedonia to India; it had become the lingua franca of the Eastern Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and North Africa. This common language is the Greek used in the New Testament and the official language of the Roman Empire.
Byzantine Greek: The rulers of the Byzantine Empire viewed themselves as the real inheritors of the Roman Empire yet they also continued their relations with Rome. When the Western counterpart of the Roman Empire fragmented into smaller states and crumbled, the Byzantine Empire managed to protect its integrity. Independent from the west, the Byzantine Empire ruled over Eastern Mediterranean and became the last center of classical Greek and Roman civilizations. This is the period of Hellenistic Greek evolving into the public language of Eastern Roman people starting from the early Middle Ages. It became the daily language of the people known as "Greek-Romans" in the whole Eastern Mediterranean Basin, the north and south of the Black Sea and in the Middle East.
Modern Greek: It emerged in the 1650s AD and is still used today. As Greece was established, Kathareuousa was declared as the official language. This was a version of old Classical Greek, which was attempted to be resurrected. In schools and public buildings only this dialect was used; however, as the public was stranger to this dialect, at homes and on the street, public Greek (Demotiki) continued to be spoken. In a law that was passed in 1976 in Greece, Kathareuousa was no longer the official language of the state and Demotiki was made the official language. Therefore, in schools, public instititutions and at homes the same language was spoken.
In a second law that was passed in 1982, the Polytonic system was abandoned and the transition to Monotonic was completed; i.e: the number of accent signs that are used to mark the stressed syllables on words were reduced from three types to one. However, conservative circles still persist in using the Polytonic system. Newspapers, magazines, media and state continue with the new order.
 
Greek is known through many dialects that share similarities in terms of vocabulary, morphology and phonetics. This differentiation in the dialects supports the "Common Greek" thesis of the linguists, which proposes that there was a single language in the beginning. Morphologically, Common Greek is close to Italian-Celtic and Armenian languages. It is also similar to the Indo-Iranian language group. Common Greek conveyed many words from what must have been one of the Pre-Hellenic Mediterranean languages, which are not yet known. Traces of this language can be found in place names.
 
The fact that Greek and Turkish cultures were so close together for centuries created an enormous interaction between them. Most of the names of fruits, vegetables, and fishing terms entered into Turkish from Greek. A lot of town names and maritime terms also have Greek origins. Besides, there are also many words in Greek from Turkish as  well— angaria: Angarya (drudgery), ahuri: Ahır (stable), avli: Avlu (courtyard), vazo: Vazo (vase), vida: Vida (screw), zari: Zar (dice), zeybekis: Zeybek (Zeibek), argo: Argo (slang), marangoz: Marangoz (carpenter), paniyiri: Panayır (cheese), seftes: Siftah (the first sale of a day), topi: Top (ball), unduki: Fındık (hazelnut), okeanos: Okyanus (ocean), omos: Omuz (shoulder)
 
Greek education can be received from three faculties in Turkey:
 
Ankara University Faculty of Language History and Geography Department of Greek Language and Literature. It was established within the Faculty of Language History and Geography in 1936 by the order of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The program still continues under the name of "Classical Philology Course" along with the Latin Language and Literature department. The program provides students with an undergraduate diploma at the end of four years of education. In the first two years, it teaches Greek grammar, morphology and patterns, as well as courses of literary history on Ionian and Attican periods, which constitute the first period of literary history, covering a period of thirteen centuries. In the 3rd and 4th years, the students read works of chief representatives and poets of the Greek culture (Homer, Plato, Xenophon, Herodotus, and Euripides) and analyze these philologically.  Additionally there are literary history courses on the last period of the Attican age and on the Hellenistic age of Ancient Greek literature. Students enrolled in the department are also responsible for all the courses in the Latin Language and Literature program, and they get an education that completely adheres to the description of classical philology.
Ankara University Faculty of Language History and Geography Department of Modern Greek Language and Literature was founded in 1991 as part of the Faculty of Language History and Geography, Western Languages and Literatures Department and had its first graduates in 1995. It teaches courses on Modern Greek language and literature.

The 7 different vowels, which differ by being long or short and breathing marks (there is no letter in Greece to correspond to "h" sound, instead a breathing mark is placed before each word that starts with two consonants and a vowel), can be considered as the most important features of the Greek language. In a Greek word, there are as many syllables as the number of vowels or double sounds. A consonant that is placed between two vowels constitutes a syllable with the vowel following it. With a few exceptions, all Greek words contain accent marks. There are three types of accent marks. These accent marks are placed on the vowels in the words. In Greek sentences, although there are no hard set rules about word order, it is more acceptable for the verb to be in the middle of the sentence. In Greek, words are compiled under three voices. Verbs have seven tenses.