On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics greek baklava Homer, ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon.

During antiquity, Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world. It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek. Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier.

Proto-Greek-speaking area according to linguist Vladimir I. Proto-Greek: the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age. Mycenaean Greek: the language of the Mycenaean civilization. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards.

Ancient Greek: in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilization. Distribution of varieties of Greek in Anatolia, 1910. Cappadocian Greek in green, with green dots indicating individual Cappadocian Greek villages. Koine Greek up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period, as early as the 11th century. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia: the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language are often emphasized.

Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near the Greek-Albanian border. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. The phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to the modern period.