Greece Culture & Language

Religion here is culture as much as belief. Between 81 and 90 per cent of Greeks were counted as Orthodox in 2022, and even the unobservant keep the calendar: Easter by the Orthodox reckoning is the year's great festival, and a name day -- the feast of the saint one is named for -- is celebrated much as a birthday is elsewhere, without the cake. Because children are by long custom named after a grandparent, names cycle through families and a village may share a handful between it.

The monastic tradition is unusually alive. Mount Athos is an autonomous region of the country governed by its monastic community under the Ecumenical Patriarch; at Meteora six of the original twenty-four monasteries -- four of men, two of women -- are still inhabited, each by fewer than ten people.

The music most associated with the country's cities is rebetiko, which grew in Piraeus and the refugee quarters after 1923 and is listed by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage. It is played live rather than performed as folklore, late and loud, in tavernas that fill after eleven.

Language is a point of quiet pride. Greek has been written in its own alphabet for around 2,800 years, and the everyday tongue keeps words a visitor will half-recognise from every European science and church. Effort in Greek is noticed and repaid.

Greek is written in its own alphabet, in continuous use for about 2,800 years, and the single most useful preparation is to learn its 24 letters: with them, station boards, road signs and menus become readable, and most of the words that look opaque turn out to be ones English borrowed. Road signs and public transport in the cities are also given in the Latin alphabet; in villages they often are not.

English is widely spoken in tourism and by younger people; older people in the countryside may have none. A few words go a long way: kaliméra (good morning), kalispéra (good evening), efharistó (thank you), parakaló (please, and also you're welcome), ne for yes and óchi for no -- the two that catch visitors out, since a Greek nod for "no" is a small upward tilt of the head.