Greek phrasebook

Greek (Ελληνικά) is one of the oldest attested Indo-European languages, known from 1400 BCE in inscriptions in a syllabary of Minoan origin. The present alphabet was introduced by a Phoenician called Qadmu (Κάδμος) about 800 BCE and has been in use continuously since then, with a few letters added and removed along the way. The 24-letter alphabet used in Classical Greek is the same one used today. Greek forms its own isolated branch within the Indo-European language family. Thus it is not related closely to any other Indo-European language. Greek is the official language of both Greece and Cyprus, but is only spoken in the south of the latter.

Many Greek words have been borrowed into other languages, so you will find a lot of these words familiar, such as τραύμα (trauma, "injury") and σοφία (sofia "wisdom, knowledge"). Originally they were borrowed into Latin, which became the Romance languages. The changes Greek words underwent in Latin are different from those they underwent in Greek. For instance, in a rare case of someone actually returning a word he borrowed, κίνημα (kinema, motion) was borrowed into Latin as cinema, which in French acquired the meaning "movie", and was returned to Greek as σινεμά (sinema).

Greek has changed less in the last two thousand years than English has in the last five hundred. It still has three genders, five cases, and movable ν. Although the dative dropped out of use in Greek before the dative merged with the accusative in English, one can still form the dative of μπαγλαμάς (a stringed instrument smaller than the μπουζούκι), even though it belongs to a new declension. So if you know some Attic or Koine Greek and pronounce it as Modern Greek, though you will sound archaic, you will probably be understood.