Wherever Greeks may be, they welcome with true joy the designation by UNESCO of February 9 as "World Greek Language Day", Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a post on Facebook.
Every year, he added, the world will honor the vehicle carrying the values of the country that gave birth to democracy, and that established philosophy and the sciences.
Mitsotakis hailed the act as "an undoubted success of our cultural diplomacy - as proof of the global appeal Homer's language always had", and beyond.
The unanimous decision, he said, to choose as point of reference and honor the day national poet Dionysios Solomos died "makes us doubly proud." Both because the Greek language is identified with the nation's historic progress, but also because it declares its universal human status, so that all citizens of the world may keep in mind poet Odysseas Elytis' line, "The language given me was Greek."
Mitsotakis also referred to the designation event earlier in the day, during his first monthly meeting with Greek President Constantine Tassoulas, who also recalled the two Greek poets to win the Nobel Prize, George Seferis in 1963 and Odysseas Elytis in 1979. Tassoulas had cited Elytis as saying in a speech in November 1979 that there is no other language in the world where the words 'sky' (ouranos) and 'sea' (thalassa) have been spoken over 3,000 years, from Homer and Plato to the present.