Greek

Greek is the sole living language of the Indo-European Hellenic branch, spoken in the southern Balkans since the third millennium BC. First attested in Mycenaean Greek on Linear B tablets in the fifteenth century BC, it has used an alphabet adapted from Phoenician since the ninth century BC.

After the conquests of Alexander the Great Greek dialects merged into Koine, the common speech of the eastern Mediterranean, used for the New Testament. Koine became the Byzantine Empire's sole administrative language in 620 and grew into the medieval vernacular underlying modern Greek.

Under Ottoman rule Greek remained the language of the Orthodox Church and of merchants. In the early nineteenth century Adamantios Korais devised the archaizing Katharevousa, adopted for official and literary use beside spoken Demotic in the new Greek state.