Language and National Identity in Greece, 1766-1976This is a history of the great language controversy that has occupied and empassioned Greeks - sometimes with fatal results - for over two hundred years. It begins in the late eighteenth-century when a group of Greek intellectuals sought to develop a new, Hellenic, national identity alongside the traditional identity supplied by Orthodox Christianity. The ensuing controversy focused on the language, fuelled on the one hand by a desire to develop a form of Greek that expressed the Greeks' relationship to the ancients, and on the other by the different groups' contrasting notions of what the national image so embodied should be. The purists wanted a written language close to the ancient. The vernacularists - later known as demoticists - sought to match written language to spoken, claiming the latter to be the product of the unbroken development of Greek since the time of Homer. Peter Mackridge explores the political, social, and linguistic causes and effects of the controversy in its many manifestations. Drawing on a wide range of evidence from literature, language, history, and anthropology, he traces its effects on spoken and written varieties of Greek and shows its impact on those in use today. He describes the efforts of linguistic elites and the state to achieve language standardization and independence from languages such as Turkish, Albanian, Vlach, and Slavonic. This is a timely book. The sense of national and linguistic identity that has been inculcated into generations of Greeks since the start of the War of Independence in 1821 has, in the last 25 years, received blows from which it may not recover. Immigration from Eastern Europe and elsewhere has introduced new populations whose religions, languages, and cultures are transforming Greece into a country quite different from what it has been and to what it once aspired to be. |
Contents
1 Theoretical background | 1 |
2 The preconditions for the Greek language controversy | 32 |
3 The early stages of the controversy 17661804 | 80 |
4 Adamantios Korais as language reformer | 102 |
5 Alternative proposals to Korais project 18041830 | 126 |
6 Language in the two Greek states 18301880 | 159 |
7 The beginning of the demoticist campaign 18801897 | 203 |
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Common terms and phrases
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek language archaists archaized argued Aromanian Athens authors Balkan Bulgarian Byzantine century Christopoulos Church claimed Classical common Constantinople Delmouzos demotic language demoticism demoticists dialect dictionary diglossia Dimaras Doukas Eftaliotis Estia expressed Fanariot Filippidis Fotiadis French Georgios grammar Greece Greek culture Greek intellectuals Greek language question Greek national Hatzidakis Hellenic Ibid ideology Ionian Islands Kakridis Karamanlides Katartzis katharévousa Kitromilides 1996 Kodrikas Konstantinos Korais Korakistika Kostis Palamas Kriaras language controversy language variety learned linguistic literary Macedonia Megali Idea Mistriotis Modern Greek Modern Greek language modern language morphological Moschonas national identity nationalist Orthodox Christians Ottoman empire Palamas Pallis patriarchate poem poet poetry political Polylas Psalidas Psycharis published purists revolution Romaic Salonica Slav Solomos songs Soutsos speakers spoken Greek spoken language term texts tradition translation Triantafyllidis Turkish Venizelos vernacularists Vilaras Vlachs vocabulary Voulgaris vulgar Wallachia words writing written language wrote Xenopoulos Zampelios