It is with a sense of responsibility and pride that we officially honor, for the first time this year, on the 9th of February, World Greek Language Day following its designation by the Member States of UNESCO—a historic recognition of a language that has served as the cradle of global civilization. Henceforth, the Greek language will be celebrated worldwide on the day on which we honor our national poet, Dionysios Solomos.
The Greek language is characterized by an unbroken continuity of more than three thousand years of written and oral use, during which it laid the foundations and shaped fundamental concepts of philosophy, democracy, law, science, and technology. Terminology of Greek origin continues to form the core vocabulary of the international scientific and academic community, confirming the conceptual depth and universal reach of its influence.
The Greek language, as a bearer of identity, knowledge, traditions, and values, connects all phases of the long history of Hellenism. Beginning with the Homeric poems and the philosophy of Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato, passing through the New Testament, it has reached the modern era of our Nobel Prize–winning poets, Seferis and Elytis.
The Greek language is the means through which we Greeks express both positive and negative concepts which, over time, spread throughout the world, were adopted by other people, and are now understood universally. The positive associations evoked by words such as paradise, angel, philanthropy, harmony, symmetry, euphoria, charisma, melody, and music, and conversely the negative associations that accompany words such as chaos, agony, tyranny, tragedy, phobia, trauma, and pandemic, have acquired global resonance.
Our language helps us organize ideas and thoughts about the world around us —the microcosm and the macrocosm, from atoms to planetary systems— within space and time, classifying them into categories, periods, zones, catalogues, and systems, measuring them through arithmetic and mathematics, and analyzing them with statistical methods, computational programs, and technological mechanisms.
Our language urges us to create models, to challenge stereotypes, and to aspire to archetypes. It endowed us with the tools of logic, analysis, synthesis, theory, strategy, and prognosis, enabling us to establish bases and axioms in our thinking and to employ both rational criteria and the power of phantasy in solving problems, enigmas, and mysteries.
It also enables us to express our emotions - pathos, zeal, and enthusiasm - and to articulate our response when we gaze at galaxies and stars in the sky or observe a cosmic phenomenon, such as a solar eclipse.
Greek words are also used to describe hubris and nemesis, which lead the heroes—and the audience—of ancient drama to Aristotelian catharsis.
The Greek language further allows us to speak about what is essential for our survival: oxygen, the atmosphere, the ecosystem, the oceans and their protection, ecology, and combatting the global challenge of the climate crisis, which threatens to bring catastrophe to humanity.
Moreover, terms used in the contemporary era to describe issues of global concern are widely expressed through words of Greek origin, such as hybrid threats, crypto-currencies, and the ethical use of artificial intelligence.
When we seek to build synergies between states around the world, dialogue and diplomacy are our assets. And when we aim to persuade our interlocutors of the soundness of our arguments, we draw upon the triptych logos – ethos – pathos, the three pillars of the rhetoric of persuasion formulated in ancient Greece.
On World Greek Language Day, we honour the language that gave us not only words, but also the concepts upon which our shared understanding of the world and of humanity was built. Our language is our soul. And this soul we shall preserve intact through the centuries. The 9th of February is not just the World Greek Language Day; It is the World Day of Greece.
February 9, 2026