The People

Nearly a third of the people live in the Athens metropolitan area.

Modern Greek, an Indo-European tongue, is the language of the country; Turkish is used by the Turks of western Thrace. There are two forms of modern Greek: demotic, the most widely spoken and popular literary form, which was officially adopted for government use and education in 1977; and katharevousa, more akin to classical Greek, which is now rarely used except by the Greek Orthodox church.

Nearly all the people belong to the Greek Orthodox church, the state church since 1864. Muslims are the largest religious minority; Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Jews make up smaller groups.

is free and compulsory for nine years, beginning at age six. Most children attend government-supported schools, others attend state-supervised private schools. Adult literacy is about 94 per cent.

The National Technical University (founded in 1836) is Greece's oldest university. The Aristotelian University of Thessaloníki is the country's largest university. In addition to universities there are also specialist schools and colleges of fine arts, agriculture and technology, industrial studies, and political science.