Where Modern Greek is spoken
Modern Greek is spoken in 12 countries: Greece, Cyprus, Germany, Canada and 8 more. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.
| Country | Share of population | Estimated speakers |
|---|---|---|
| Greece | 99% | 10,356,489 |
| Cyprus | 95% | 1,254,504 |
| Germany | 0.4% | 319,653 |
| Canada | 0.4% | 155,179 |
| Albania | 1.9% | 59,035 |
| Bulgaria | Not given | Not given |
| Egypt | Not given | Not given |
| Italy | Not given | Not given |
| North Macedonia | Not given | Not given |
| Romania | Not given | Not given |
| Turkey | Not given | Not given |
| Ukraine | Not given | Not given |
Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.
On the map, Modern Greek is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks Modern Greek.
How many people speak Modern Greek?
Wikidata gives about 15 million speakers (Wikidata, with no source given). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.
Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.
Where Modern Greek sits in the language family tree
Glottolog classifies Modern Greek as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.
- Indo-European
- Classical Indo-European
- Graeco-Phrygian
- Greek
- South Greek
- Central Greek
- Koineic Greek
- Modern Koineic Greek
- Nuclear Modern Greek
- Modern Greek
Related languages
Other languages in the Nuclear Modern Greek group:
More about Modern Greek
- Read about Modern Greek on Wikipedia
- Indo-European languages map
- Languages spoken in Greece
- All languages, A to Z
Codes: ISO 639-3 ell, Glottolog mode1248. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.
Questions about Modern Greek
Where is Modern Greek spoken?
Modern Greek is spoken in Greece, Cyprus, Germany, Canada and 8 more. Unicode CLDR puts it at 99% of the population of Greece, which is about 10,356,489 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.
How many people speak Modern Greek?
Wikidata gives about 15 million speakers (Wikidata, with no source given). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.
Which language family is Modern Greek in?
Glottolog places Modern Greek in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Graeco-Phrygian, Greek, South Greek, Central Greek, Koineic Greek, Modern Koineic Greek and Nuclear Modern Greek.