
[The first few paragraphs of the Wikipedia entry for "Modern Greek" - if this doesn't demonstrate that I can post more than a couple of lines, nothing will! ...]
Modern Greek (Greek: Νέα Ελληνικά or Νεοελληνική, "Neo-Hellenic", historically also known as Ρωμαίικα, "Romaic" or "Roman") refers to the varieties of Greek spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic modern features of the language had been present centuries earlier - from the third century BC to the tenth century AD.[5] During much of this time, the language existed in a situation of diglossia, with regional spoken dialects existing side by side with learned, archaic written forms. Most notably, during much of the 19th and 20th centuries, it was known in the competing varieties of popular Demotic and learned Katharevousa. Today, Standard Modern Greek, based on Demotic, is the official language of both Greece and Cyprus. Greek is spoken today by approximately 12-15 million people, mainly in Greece and Cyprus, but also by minority and immigrant communities in many other countries.
Greek forms an independent branch of the Indo-European languages. Within Greek, all surviving forms of Modern Greek, except the Tsakonian dialect, are descendants of the common supra-regional (Koine) as it was spoken in late antiquity. As such, they can ultimately be classified as descendants of Attic, the dialect spoken in and around Athens in the classical era. Tsakonian, an isolated dialect spoken today by a dwindling community in the Peloponese, is a descendant of the ancient Doric dialect. Some other dialects have preserved elements of various ancient non-Attic dialects, but Attic Koine is nevertheless regarded by most scholars as the principal source of all of them.
Modern Greek is spoken by about 12 million people mainly in Greece and Cyprus. There are also traditional Greek-speaking settlements in the neighboring countries Albania, Bulgaria and Turkey, as well as in several countries in the Black Sea area (Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Armenia) and around the Mediterranean Sea (Southern Italy, Egypt). The language is also spoken by emigrant communities in many countries in Western Europe, North America, Australia, as well as in Argentina, Brazil and others. Countries with notable number of speakers of Greek as a foreign language are Serbia, Albania, Bulgaria and Romania.
Greek is the official language of Greece where it is spoken by about 99.5% of the population. It is also, alongside Turkish, the official language of Cyprus. Because of the membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the 23 official languages of the European Union. Greek is officially recognised as a minority language in parts of Italy, Turkey, Armenia, Ukraine and Albania.