Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0145/01457.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 25KB | 389 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01457}
$Pretitle{287}
$Title{Greece
Chapter 2D.   Language}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{greek
education
percent
schools
demotic
students
university
language
katharevousa
form}
$Date{1986}
$Log{}
Country:     Greece
Book:        Greece, A Country Study
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1986

Chapter 2D.   Language

     Greece is linguistically homogenous. Since 1951 the Greek census has
recorded neither mother tongue nor religious affiliation. In the mid-1970s
observers estimated that only 2 to 3 percent of inhabitants did not speak
Greek as their first language. This minority spoke Turkish, Macedo-Slav,
Vlach (a Romanian dialect), Albanian, or Pomak (a Bulgarian dialect). The
language of the majority, Greek, is a direct descendant of the Indo-European
language spoken by civilizations occupying the Greek mainland, the Aegean
Islands, and nearby Asia Minor many centuries before Christ.

     Greek villagers use the term Vlach to refer to shepherds, thus confusing
an occupation with an ethnic group. The ethnic Vlachs, also called
Koutsovlachs and Aromani, have lived in the Balkan Peninsula for centuries;
those in Greece traditionally were shepherds, though they now may also depend
on agriculture, forestry, or city jobs. Frequently mistaken for Vlachs were
Sarakatsani, also transhumant shepherds and concentrated in Epirus. They are
Greek Orthodox, like most Vlachs, but speak only Greek as opposed to Greek and
a dialect of Romanian. Sarakatsani culture and social institutions differ from
those of the Vlachs, and relations have often been strained because of
competition over winter grazing land. In the early 1970s there may have been
as many as 100,000 Vlachs, and in 1974 some 80,000 Sarakatsani; more recent
official figures were not available in 1985.

     The 1951 census reported a little over 40,000 Slav speakers living mainly
in Macedonia and close to 19,000 Pomaks living in Thrace (Bulgarian-speaking
Muslims exempted from population exchanges in the 1920s). It also reported
22,000 Greek Orthodox identifying themselves as Albanian speakers in the
provinces of Attica and Voiotia, in the northeastern Peloponnesus, and in
nearby Aegean islands; by the mid-1970s most of those of Albanian descent
identified themselves as Greek and did not strive to maintain Albanian
cultural traditions.

     At various points in its history, Greek has suffered from what is called
the literary fallacy, that is, a tension between the evolving spoken language
and a preference for a literary model from the classical period. As a
consequence Greeks have switched between forms of Greek depending on the
circumstances of use. This was true still in the 1980s when three forms of
Greek-koine, demotic, and katharevousa (as well as mixtures of the last
two)-were being used in the country.

     Koine (literally, common), was the language of the common people during
the Hellenistic period and was used in the New Testament, Septuagint, and the
writings of the early church fathers. Also an important international
language, it was the language of Greek literature for 10 centuries, and the
early church used it to appeal to potential converts, adopting it as the
church's official language in A.D. 330. The Greek Orthodox church has
continued to use it in the liturgy (see table 4).

     Demotic was historically the language of the common people as Greek
continued to evolve from koine and today is the form of Greek used in informal
situations by all Greeks. It assumed its morphological and syntactic form by
the seventh century A.D. Its evolution, especially during the Byzantine period
(sixth to fifteenth centuries), can be traced only with difficulty because it
was essentially a spoken, not a written, form. Demotic was employed only in
popular literature, as opposed to a form modeled on ancient Attic Greek that
was used for formal speaking and writing. Demotic was not considered
appropriate or adequate for use in serious literature or in explaining
abstract or scientific ideas. By the fourteenth century, elements of the
spoken language were being used in poetry, but even up to the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries serious literature and translations from Western
languages were not written in demotic (except in Crete and Cyprus).

     In the nineteenth century a movement developed-parallel to that
supporting katharevousa-to promote demotic. Yanis Psiharis (1854-1929), a
scholar with a great interest in the speech of the common people and an
expanded definition of "Hellenic," wrote the first serious book in demotic in
1888, My Journey, a novel that was to become a model of style in the new
demotic literary movement. Even though learned works continued to be written
in Katharevousa in the 1970s, poetry and novels were written in demotic by
such twentieth-century authors as Nikos Kazantzakis, Constantine Cavafy, and
George Seferis. In 1976 the government of Constantine Karamanlis adopted a
form of demotic called common or standard modern Greek (Neohelliniki). It is
a compromise, being neither the purist demotic of literature nor the less
rigorous version of katharevousa formerly used for scientific and
technological material; standard modern Greek combines demotic structure
with katharevousa vocabulary and phrases.

     Literally meaning "pure," katharevousa was the language of officialdom
and education as recently as the rule of the colonels (1967-74). It was an
artificial language, invented by Adamantios Korais (1748-1833) in an attempt
to improve written and spoken Greek by arbitrary corrections drawing on
classical and Hellenistic Greek. It became the official state language by
successive laws in 1834 and 1836 because of support from youth influenced by
Korais, from the bourgeoisie, and from the intelligentsia. Although Korais
wanted to combine elements of demotic (the people's language) with classical
elements, after official adoption katharevousa became more and more
unintelligible to the uneducated, as well as more imprecise.

     Language became a political issue in the early nineteenth century as
Greeks began addressing the issue of national identity. The issue at hand was
what particular form of Greek was most germane to the establishment of a
modern, independent Greek state. But there was no consensus on what the most
desirable choice should be. The situation was complicated because some Greeks
sought to identify with Attic Greek used in classical times, while others
favored the form of koine used as official Byzantine Greek that was synonymous
with the status quo of the church and the Phanariot elite (see The Ottoman
Occupation, ch. 1). Still others wanted a modified form of demotic because
they equated "nation" with the majority of the people. Ancient Greek, or the
Greek used by the church, could not be adopted officially without modification
because of the need for a nationally comprehensible language in light of
regional variations, unfamiliarity of the uneducated with any form but
demotic, intrusions of foreign words (often associated with foreign
domination), and lack of a strong demotic literary tradition.

     After the 1976 law was promulgated, the most obvious change was the
switch from katharevousa to standard modern Greek for secondary and university
education. (Demotic had been used in lower elementary grades more or less
continuously since 1917). Some parts of the government lagged more than others
in effective implementation of linguistic change-the armed forces, the courts
and lawyers, the church (although sermons and pastoral work were in demotic),
certain segments of the bureaucracy, and some areas of higher education.
Before the colonels' reinstatement of katharevousa in 1967, a newspaper might
have had official notices and weather reports in katharevousa, editorials and
poems in demotic, and news in a mixture of the two. By 1985 most newspapers
(with the exception of those of the right wing) were published in demotic.

     In gen