Page 2 of 3
 Greek today
The history of Greek
Names and writing system
Greek history
Greek is an Indo-European language. There are two main forms: katharevousa or 'purified language', which is closely related to Ancient Greek, and dimotiki or 'common language', which is more closely related to the spoken language. Until 1974, katharevousa was used in education; since that time, it has been replaced by dimotiki, also known as Standard Modern Greek. There is a range of regional dialects of Greece. No doubt because of the isolation from the mainland, Cypriots, for instance, speak a very conservative dialect which is closer to Ancient Greek than any other present day variety of Greek, but with many Arabic and Turkish loan words.
 |
