The recent international recognition of our language by UNESCO being celebrated worldwide as GREEK LANGUAGE DAY is a historic milestone for the evolution of Greek culture and the course of our language in particular, for the last 3,500 years.
The Greek language historically gained international recognition when it became the first language of the West and the East for 800 years, from the time of Alexander the Great, from Macedonia and the rest of Greece to the Indo-Hellenic Kingdoms in South Asia. And then, from the time of Justinian, when this Roman emperor made the Greek language the official language of the Byzantine Empire and consequently the official language of a territory from France to Mesopotamia.
The second stage of the development of Greek was the Renaissance Period that began in Italy in the middle of the 12th century, during which Greek culture, values and language emerged as the main levers of restart and the quintessence of European civilization. This period was essentially a social and cultural movement, which rekindled modern society based on the Greek and Christian ethos, with the rise of Humanist intellectuals and philosophers, a movement of four centuries, with the Greek language and culture predominating and influencing Europe. The emergence of the Greek teachers of the Hellenic Nation, from Manuel Chrysoloras, Vissarion, Plethon Gemistos and to Alexandros Mavrokordatos, gave the necessary prestige to the Greek language as the language of a thinking humanity.
The third historical milestone of the Greek language was the period of Neo-Humanism from the middle of the 18th century, from the time of the great German historian and archaeologist, Joachim Winckelmann, whose writings ignited Europe and sparked a movement in favour of Greek culture and language, to the point that Germans submitted to Greek culture and the principles of ancient Greece. This movement for 200 years cultivated in central Europe the phenomenon that has gone down in history as Grecomania and Grecophilia.
The fourth historical milestone of the Greek language was ignited on April 14, 2025, when the Executive Committee of UNESCO, consisting of 80 countries of the world, the UN’s Cultural Executive Committee, recognised the universal importance of the Greek language at a global level and established that Greek Language Day be celebrated worldwide.
Until this day, we Greeks and Philhellenes alone blessed our own beards, we celebrated alone, within the walls of our nationhood, between us, the importance of the Greek language. We celebrated the Greek language on our own, and in March in Australia we did everything possible to “speak” Greek.
With the decision of UNESCO, for the first time the importance and significance of Greek is internationalised; it is now established as the language that will be celebrated with events and ceremonies by all countries of the world. Now all foreigners and foreign speaking people will have the opportunity to learn and be informed about the Greek language and evaluate why this little Great language is so important.
From now on, the role of the Greek Diaspora begins, the responsibility of the leadership of the Communities and the Church, the destiny of the Greek family, the tremendous responsibility of the Greek teacher and the Orthodox priests and deacons and high priests, the community leaders, the heads of the university faculties and chairs of the Greek language, the publishers of newspapers, and the officials of the Greek-language radio. Hellenism (and even the Greek political world) stood in front of this tremendous global achievement of the Greek language, after a huge effort by Ambassador Giorgos Koumoutsakos and a handful of Greek academics from Europe, America and Australia, led by Professor Georgios Babiniotis, Hellenism, I repeat, has so far stood numb, almost confused, almost stunned, as if this achievement had not taken place.
The global significance and importance of the achievement and what should follow, how Hellenism will be able to utilise what Greek diplomacy, and a few academic enthusiasts had achieved in Paris, was not understood. There were no announcements from the Ministries of Education and Culture of Greece; the Academy of Athens did not wake up from its lethargy; the voice of the Rectors of the Greek and Cypriot Universities was not heard; the Associations of Greek and Modern Greek Studies did not play a role in the pace of the restart of our language and its teaching at all levels of education.
This achievement, which began with a vision of a child of the Diaspora from Naples, Italy, Professor John Corinth, still remains inconceivable, as if it were an apparition that evaporated at first enthusiasm.
If we remain inactive and do not make use of what we achieved in Paris, and if we leave the establishment of the Day of the Greek Language without a response, without an antidote, without a compensation, then it is good to re-read Cavafy’s poem about the Poseidonians, those who listened to the sound of a language that they no longer spoke and did not use and reminded them of their fathers and popular glories from a past that had been extinguished. We must re-read Cavafy, because those who are in danger of losing their language are the expatriates, and Orthodoxy will follow with them, because without the Greek language and Greece, Orthodoxy will be a religion without a historical basis, without a recall from history and its roots. Let’s read our great Alexandrian poet:
The Poseidonians forgot the Greek language
after so many centuries of mingling
with Tyrrhenians, Latins, and other foreigners.
The only thing surviving from their ancestors
was a Greek festival, with beautiful rites,
with lyres and flutes, contests and wreaths.
And it was their habit toward the festival’s end
to tell each other about their ancient customs
and once again to speak Greek names
that only few of them still recognised.
And so their festival always had a melancholy ending
because they remembered that they too were Greeks,
they too once upon a time were citizens of Magna Graecia;
and how low they’d fallen now, what they’d become,
living and speaking like barbarians,
cut off so disastrously from the Greek way of life.
Hellenism, its leaders, the institutional leaders, the seminarians, the clergy, the teachers and writers, the artists and journalists, the Philhellenes, the lovers of Greek culture, the Greek family, all of us and each of us, are called to abandon, in the face of the achievement of the recognition of the celebration of our language by all the countries of the world. Our personal the unbridled envy that is being caused by a success achieved by others and not from us, should not stop us. We must all share the joy and honour of the whole of humanity for our language.
Let us promote the essence of the achievement, let us promote the Greek language to our children, so that it can be preserved by our grandchildren; even if we have not done so until today, and let us all become soldiers of our language and culture, and let us prepare from now on for the celebrations of the Greek Language on February 9, 2026, with all our fellow Greeks, philhellenes and Australian friends. We owe it to Homer’s language and to our culture, as we only stand as its natural remaining heirs in the world.
Now the time has come for the Greek and expatriate Greeks and all those who have a relationship with Greece and the Greeks abroad (i.e. all peoples) to understand the significance of the historic Day of April 14, 2025, when UNESCO and the UN decided, on behalf of all the peoples of the earth, to recognise the Greek language, as a language and a property. as a cultural heritage of Humanity, so that they can be acclaimed to celebrate it together.
Now the time has come for all of us to understand and become aware of the fact that all of us, as a Nation, as a Government, as a Parliament and the Church, will fail if we do not all become, each in his own way, the belts of the one wheel that is our little Great Language, according to the poet. The role and responsibility of the expatriate Hellenism is decisive and cannot be excused or postponed.
