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The Greek Language
Greece's ancient history makes its language one of the most prestigious in the world, one which has influenced many Western languages. The importance of Greek is reflected in our everyday life, as a lot of technical and scientific words which form active part of many languages derive directly from Greek. Around 6 million people in Greece speak the language, plus other 600 000 in Cyprus.Dialects and History
In Ancient Greece it was spoken a primitive form of Greek which was called Koine. Nowadays, Koine has survived as the language of the educated, even if it sounds obsolete to a speaker of modern Greek. Later, the language evoluted following two different lines. The first line originated from the Katharevousa dialect, which was used in institutions (i.e. school or the army) and in the media. The other variety which influenced Greek was Demotic, which was used in literature and in everyday conversation. It was Demotic which had more success among Greek-speakers, as it is still spoken nowadays and in 1976 it became the official language of the country.Literature
The quantity and quality of the literary works which have been produced in ancient Greece has yet to be surpassed. Greece literature is one of the anciest in the world and it has been translated to dozens of languages. Thanks to the high-quality works they have written in every field-drama, poetry, prose- Greek authors are still studied in schools all over the world.Just to mention some famous Greek authors, we find the great Homer, who with his epics the Iliad and the Odyssey narrated the story of the two heroes of the Trojan war Achilles and Odysseus. Homer's works nowadays still fascinate millions of readers, as it is for the poems by Euripides and Sappho, the latter being the only woman to produce important literary works. Sophocles and Euripides were two drama masters, as it is proven by their tragedies in verse. Thanks to the works of Herodutus and Thucydices, we now are able to know what happened during the Persian and the Peloponnesian wars. What is more, Plato and Aristotele wrote philosophy's masterpieces and it was in ancient Greece that the first legal and political speeches were written (300 BC).