Greek

What was the characteristics of the Greek dialects that were once spoken in western Anatolia?

I assume OP is asking about the West Anatolian dialects of Modern Greek, not Ancient Greek.

What language is spoken in Athens, Greece?

To add to the other answers, and to answer a slightly different question :) : between the 1300s and the 1800s, the region *around* Athens was substantially Albanian-speaking (Arvanitika). That’s why the map Brian Collins included in his answer has a patch…

What are some common Greek and Turkish words?

There used to be a lot more Turkish words in Greek, but purism and changes in institutions have gotten rid of a lot of them. There are still a fair few in daily use. Nikos Sarantakos’ blog [Page on wordpress.com] has a list of 218 Turkish words that…

What other languages influenced Greek?

In terms of the usual interpretation of the question (what languages did Greek borrow words from), at different times Greek has borrowed words from:

• Persian (a small number)
• Latin (a fair few)

How different is the Ancient Greek language from the modern Greek language? Can any Greek-speaking people testify if they understand classical Greek of Homer, et al?

Why do the names of many Greek letters end in “a”?

The following is intelligent guesswork.

In ancient Greek, words were constrained to end in a vowel, /n/ or /s/.
The Phoenecian letter names did not fit that pattern, so they were adapted to end in vowels.