Greek Americans are Americans of full or partial Greek ancestry. The lowest estimate is that 1.2 million Americans are of Greek descent while the highest estimate suggests over 3 million. According to the US census, 264,066 people older than five spoke Greek at home in 2019.
A young Greek immigrant on Ellis Island, New York City, late 19th century
Greek parade at 57th Street, New York State
Greek-American volunteers in the Balkan Wars
Sponge auction in Tarpon Springs, Florida, in 1947. The community has the highest percentage of Greek Americans of any city in the U.S.
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus, Italy, southern Albania, and other regions of the Balkans, the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet, which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Coptic, Gothic, and many other writing systems.
Idealised portrayal of the author Homer
Greek inscription in Cypriot syllabic script
