Basic information on the spoken languages and the educational system:

Greek

The Greek language is a  member of the Indo-European family  It is called the first language of Western civilization with a long and well-documented history that spans 34 centuries.

It also has one of the greatest literatures of all time. Many modern scientific and technical words in Western languages are derived from Greek. Modern Greek goes back to the 15th century (fall of the Byzantine Empire). The Greek language has not changed much in its long history. The differences are largely in pronunciation and vocabulary, but they also include divergences in grammar. The spoken form of Modern Greek, however, differed markedly from the written form until recently. The written and puristic form,  referred to as Katharevousa, was used by the government, the schools, and the mass media until the mid-1970s and is much more like Ancient Greek than the spoken form, which is called Demotic, which was in 1976 accepted as the official written Greek language. Greek is one of the official languages of the European Union.

There is a multiplicity of contradictory data on lesser used languages in Greece.

Aromanian (Vlach)

Vlach speakers are found scattered across Thessaloniki, Pindus and Ipiros (the mountainous regions of the Hellenic peninsula). Nowadays, most of the speakers live in adjacent cities. There are no reliable estimates of the number of speakers of the language. The language is confined to family and colloquial use. The Greek authorities do not recognise Aromanian as a different ethnic group, considering them rather as AVlach-(or Latin) speaking Greek@. The Aromanian language disappeared from all educational levels until recently, when an Aromanian course was introduced at the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki.

Slav-Macedonian

During the first two decades of the century and during the years of the civil war (ended in 1949), a substantial proportion of Slav speakers left their homes to settle down in what today is Bulgaria and Macedonia. Most of the areas which were then populated by Slav speakers kept Slav speaking groups, namely from the prefecture of Drama to prefecture of Kastoria. The language is more dynamic in the prefectures of Florina and Pella. The official census of 1951 indicated that about 40.000 speakers of Slav-Macedonian lived in Greek Macedonia but the figures were underestimated. Recent estimates are much higher.

Turkish

The Turkish language group in Greece is to be found in Western Thrace, in the north-east, fairly close to the borders with Bulgaria and Turkey. It is estimated that the group consists of between 90.000 and 120.000 speakers. The majority live in the provinces of Xanthi (approx. 27.000 speakers), Rodopi (approx. 75.000 speakers) and Evros (approx. 600 speakers). Over a period of three generations, whereas proficiency in Turkish has remained high, proficiency in Greek has advanced considerably, though the over 80% of the grandparental generation are reported to have (or have had) little or no proficenciency in this language, and the figure was still as high as 42% among fathers and 56% among mothers. Language reproduction is also consolidated by the strong presence of the language in primary schools, thanks to the bilateral treaty with Turkey governing the Muslims in Greece and the Greek-speakers in Turkey. However, the importance of Greek for professional advancement is acknowledged.

Albanian

Almost all speakers of Albanian (Arvanitika) are today bilingual, i.e. they also speak Greek, usually fluently for the younger generations. It is widely agreed that Arvanitika today have been influenced significantly by the linguistic environment in which they have evolved, sometimes for centuries, without any contact with the Albanian communities of modern day Albania. So, it has acquired a separate (Ausbau) status from Albanian, in fact with dialectical richness; nevertheless, at least partial mutual intelligibility between Arvanite and Albanian exsists. A comparison with standard Albanian shows that Arvanitika has suffered reduction and simplification.

Pomak (Bulgarian)

Pomaks live in the three departments of Western Thrace: they are the main component of the Muslim (in fact today Turkish) minority in Xanthi. There have not been any official statistics since 1951. The best estimate for the Pomaks today is a range of 27 to 49 thousand.

In education, the Pomak language has never been included in the educational curricula of the modern Greek state, but it is used as a means of communication among pupils at schools and, at the kindergarten and elementary level, sometimes by teachers. Otherwise, Pomaks attend the same schools with Turks and Muslim Roma in Thrace. According to Greek authorities, in 1994, for the whole Muslim (indeed Turkish) community, there were 231 Muslim elementary schools with 8.591 pupils and two minority secondary schools plus two Muslim seminars with 511 students: the secondary schools are obviously insufficient for the needs of the community, which is thus discouraged to send the children beyond primary school, although, according to Greek law, education is mandatory through the third year of secondary school. Many Pomak families, just like many Turkish families, therefore choose to send their children to schools in Turkey.

Today, most Pomaks are fluent in Turkish (the language of their education and the dominant language within the broad Muslim community), understand some Arabic (the language of the Koran) and can also speak Greek (a language they use to communicate with Greeks and Greek authorities). In the mountain villages, most speak Pomak at home; their language does not seem to be severely threatened with extinction and its use is not systematically discouraged by Greek authorities.

Eurostat surveys showed that 39% of the population can take part in a conversation in English, 5% in French and 3% in German.

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