What language is spoken in Athens?

Greek. Modern Greek, technically Demotic Greek since 1976 when Greece dropped the older Katharevousa register. The alphabet has 24 letters. You'll recognize alpha, beta, delta, and pi from university math, but that recognition is misleading. The letter that looks like a P is rho (an R sound), and the one that looks like an H is eta (an EE sound). This trips up every first-timer reading street signs around Monastiraki Square and Ermou Street. To be fair, pronunciation is simpler than languages like Mandarin with its 4 tones or Thai with 5. Greek is phonetic. Each of those 24 letters makes one consistent sound, with no silent letters and no pitch tricks. The stress mark (tonos) above a vowel tells you which syllable to hit. 'Efcharistó' has the stress on the last syllable. Get that right and Athenians hear effort, not butchery.

English proficiency in Athens splits along two lines, age and location. In the Plaka-Syntagma-Kolonaki triangle, restaurant and hotel staff under 40 speak functional-to-fluent English. Greece's school system has taught English from age 8 since the early 1990s, and most Athenians under 45 did private frontistirio (cram school) sessions on top of that. Greece currently ranks in the 'moderate' band on the EF English Proficiency Index, around 30th globally. The gap shows with older taxi drivers, periptero (kiosk) operators in residential Kypseli or Pangrati, and the grandmothers selling dried oregano at the Varvakios Central Market on Athinas Street. The sharp herbal smell hits you 20 meters before you reach the spice stalls. There, point at what you want and hold up fingers for quantity. Google Translate's camera mode handles Greek-alphabet menus and signs well because the script is clean, one letter per sound. Worth noting, the Athens Metro posts all station names in both Greek and Latin script, so underground navigation needs zero Greek.

The phrases that change your experience are fewer than phrasebooks suggest. 'Yia sou' (hello and goodbye to one person, 'yia sas' for formal or plural) opens every interaction at a shop counter or kafeneio table. 'Efcharistó' (thank you) with the stress on the final O is the single most useful word in Athens. 'Parakaló' does triple duty, meaning please, you're welcome, and go ahead. 'Ton logariasmo, parakaló' (the bill, please) gets you out of any taverna on Adrianou Street or a rooftop bar in Psyrri. 'Signómi' (excuse me) clears a path through the Friday-night crowds around Monastiraki Square. The real stumbling block is head gestures, not vocabulary. 'Ne' means yes but sounds like 'nah' to English speakers. Greeks tilt their chin upward with a soft tongue click for no, and dip their head to one side for yes. At a bakery counter in Exarcheia, you might ask for a tyropita (cheese pie, about €2, warm and flaky from the oven) and mistake the server's upward chin-tilt for a greeting when it means 'we're out.'

Menu Greek is its own skill. Taverna menus in Plaka and Psyrri tend to have English translations, but neighborhood spots in Petralona or Koukaki sometimes don't. The words to recognize on a Greek-only menu are psomí (bread), kréas (meat), psári (fish), chorta (greens, usually boiled and dressed in sharp lemon), and neró (water). Say 'ena kafé metrio' at any kafeneio and you'll get a medium-sweet Greek coffee, served in a tiny porcelain cup with fine grounds settled at the bottom. If you want filtered coffee, ask for 'ena filtro.' The real Athens coffee order since about 2010 is freddo espresso, an iced double shot shaken until frothy and served in a tall glass. You'll hear the blenders grinding on Kolokotroni Street from half a block away in the 35°C July afternoon. One more thing. 'Malaka' is the word you'll hear most on Athens sidewalks. It technically translates to something crude, but among friends under 30 it functions closer to 'dude.' Don't use it with strangers or anyone over 50.