Greek constitutes its own branch of the Indo-European languages. It has a documented history of 3,500 years, the longest of any Indo-European language. It is spoken by 15 million people primarily in Greece and Cyprus but also in many Greek emigrant communities around the world.
Greek is written in the Greek alphabet the first true alphabet (as opposed to an abjad or abugida) and the ancestor of both the Latin and the Cyrillic alphabets.
The Greek language, as we know it today, had its origin during the classical era, though it has undergone a considerable number of changes. In our day, in its modern form, demotikí or 'popular' Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus.