Varieties of Modern Greek

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The linguistic varieties of

Dimotiki and Katharevousa
during the 19th and 20th centuries. As for regional dialects, variation within the bulk of dialects of present-day Greece is not particularly strong, except for a number of outlying, highly divergent dialects spoken by isolated communities.

Diglossia

Roots and history: Demotic and Katharevousa

Ever since the times of Koiné Greek in Hellenistic and Roman antiquity, there was a competition between the naturally evolving spoken forms of Greek on the one hand, and the use of artificially archaic, learned registers on the other. The learned registers employed grammatical and lexical forms in imitation of classical Attic Greek (Atticism).[1] This situation is known in modern linguistics as diglossia.[2]

During the Middle Ages, Greek writing varied along a continuum between extreme forms of the high register very close to Attic, and moderate forms much closer to the spoken

vernacular language of the 15th century.[4] During the early Modern Era, a middle-ground variety of moderately archaic written standard Greek emerged in the usage of educated Greeks (such as the Phanariots) and the Greek church; its syntax was essentially Modern Greek.[5] After the Greek War of Independence and the formation of the modern Greek state (1830), a political effort was made to "purify" this form of Greek by bringing it back to resemble classical Attic Greek more closely. The result was Katharevousa (καθαρεύουσα, lit. 'the purifying one'), still a compromise form with basically Modern Greek syntax, but re-lexified with a much larger amount of Ancient Greek words and morphology.[6]
Katharevousa was used as an official language in administration, education, the church, journalism, and (until the late 19th century) in literature.

At the same time, spoken Demotic, while not recognised as an official language, nevertheless developed a supra-regional, de facto standard variety. From the late 19th century onwards, written Demotic rather than Katharevousa became the primary medium of literature. During much of the 20th century, there were heated political conflicts over the use of either of the two varieties, especially over the issue of their use in education. Schools were forced to switch from one form to the other and back several times during the 20th century. The conflict was resolved only after the overthrow of the

Greek military junta of 1967-1974, whose strong ideological pro-Katharevousa stance had ultimately contributed to bringing that language form into disrepute.[7] In 1976, shortly after the restoration of democracy, Demotic was finally adopted for use everywhere in education and became the language of the state for all official purposes.[8] By that time, however, the form of Demotic used in practice was no longer the pure popular dialect, but had begun to assimilate elements from the Katharevousa tradition again. In 1982 diacritics were replaced by the monotonic orthography.[9]

Standard Modern Greek

Modern linguistics has come to call the resulting variety "Standard Modern Greek" to distinguish it from the pure original Demotic of earlier literature and traditional vernacular speech. Greek authors sometimes use the term "Modern Greek Koiné" (Greek: Νεοελληνική Κοινή, romanized: Neoellinikí Koiní, lit.'Common Modern Greek'), reviving the term

supra-dialect product of the composition of both the Demotic and Katharevousa."[10] Indeed, Standard Modern Greek has incorporated a large amount of vocabulary from the learned tradition, especially through the registers of academic discourse, politics, technology and religion; together with these, it has incorporated a number of morphological features associated with their inflectional paradigms, as well as some phonological
features not originally found in pure Demotic.

History of modern Greek dialects

The first systematic scholarly treatment of the modern Greek dialects took place after the middle of the 19th century, mainly thanks to the work of the prominent Greek linguist Georgios Hadjidakis.[11] The absence of descriptive accounts of the speech of individual regions made the efforts of the researchers of the 19th century more difficult.[12] Therefore, the dialects' forms are known to us only during their last phase (from the middle of the 19th century, and until the panhellenic dominance of the Standard Modern Greek).

Initial dialect differentiation

Modern linguistics is not in accord with the tendency of the 19th century scholars to regard modern Greek dialects as the direct descendants of the dialects of ancient Greek.[13] According to the latest findings of scholarship, modern Greek dialects are products of the dialect differentiation of Koiné Greek, and, with the exception of Tsakonian and possibly Italiot Greek, they have no correlation with the ancient dialects.[14]

It is difficult to monitor the evolution of

Early Renaissance on the islands of Cyprus and Crete.[15]

Historical literary dialects

Before the establishment of a common written standard of Demotic Greek, there were various approaches to using regional variants of Demotic as a written language. Dialect is recorded in areas outside

It is above all from the island of Crete, during the period of

(1553–1614).

Later, during the 18th and early 19th centuries, the

Greek Revolution
of 1821–1830. His language became influential on the further course of standardisation that led to the emergence of the modern standard form of Demotic, based on the south-western dialects.

Modern varieties

Spoken modern vernacular Greek can be divided into various geographical varieties. There are a small number of highly divergent, outlying varieties spoken by relatively isolated communities, and a broader range of mainstream dialects less divergent from each other and from Standard Modern Greek, which cover most of the linguistic area of present-day

Cappadocian and Italiot), whereas the bulk of the mainstream spoken varieties of present-day Greece are classified as "idioms".[18] However, most English-speaking linguists tend to refer to them as "dialects", emphasising degrees of variation only when necessary. The geographical varieties of Greek are divided into three main groups, Northern, Semi-Northern and Southern, based on whether they make synizesis and vowel elision:[19]

Examples of Northern dialects are Rumelian, Epirote (except Thesprotia prefecture), Thessalian, Macedonian,[20] Thracian.
The Southern category is divided into groups that include variety groups from:
  1. Megara, Aegina, Athens, Kymi (Old Athenian) and Mani Peninsula (Maniot)
  2. Peloponnese (except Mani), Cyclades, Crete and Ionian Islands
  3. Dodecanese and Cyprus.
  4. Parts of southern Albania (known as Northern Epirus among Greeks).[21]
  5. Asia Minor (Modern Turkey)

Outlying varieties

Tsakonian

(Tsakonian/Greek) "Our language is Tsakonian. Ask and they'll tell you". Greek sign in the town of Leonidio.

Tsakonian is a highly divergent variety, sometimes classified as a separate language because of not being intelligible to speakers of standard Greek.

Koiné, but from Doric or from a mixed form of a late, ancient Laconian variety of the Koiné influenced by Doric.[24] It used to be spoken earlier in a wider area of the Peloponnese, including Laconia, the historical home of the Doric Spartans
.

Pontic Greek

Anatolian Greek until 1923. Demotic in yellow. Pontic in orange. Cappadocian, Pharasiot and Silliot Greek are in green. Green dots indicate non-Pontic-speaking villages in 1910.[25]

Pontic Greek varieties are those originally spoken along the eastern

Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) and the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, the Pontic speakers of Turkey were expelled and moved to Greece. Of the Pontic speakers in the ex-Soviet Union, many have immigrated to Greece more recently. The number of Pontic Greeks currently maintaining the dialect is unclear.[26] A small group of Muslim Pontic speakers remain in Turkey, although their varieties show heavy structural convergence towards Turkish.[27]

Cappadocian Greek

Other varieties of Anatolian Greek that were influenced by the Turkish language, besides Pontic, are now almost extinct, but were widely spoken until 1923 in central Turkey, and especially in Cappadocia.[28] In 1923, all Orthodox Christian inhabitants of Asia Minor were forced to emigrate to Greece after the Greek genocide (1919–1921) during the Population exchange between Greece and Turkey.[29] In 2005, professors Mark Janse and Dimitris Papazachariou discovered that there are still native speakers of the Mistiot dialect of Cappadocian in Central and Northern Greece.[30] Cappadocian Greek diverged from the other Byzantine Greek varieties earlier, beginning with the Turkish conquests of central Anatolia in the 11th and 12th centuries, and so developed several radical features, such as the loss of the gender for nouns.[25] Having been isolated from the crusader conquests (Fourth Crusade) and the later Venetian influence of the Greek coast, it retained the Ancient Greek terms for many words that were replaced with Romance ones in Demotic Greek.[25] The poet Rumi, whose name means "Roman", referring to his residence amongst the "Roman" Greek speakers of Cappadocia, wrote a few poems in Cappadocian Greek, leaving one of the earliest attestations of the dialect.[31][32][33][34]

Pharasiot Greek

The Greek dialect spoken in Pharasa (Faraşa, now Çamlıca village in Yahyalı, Kayseri) and other nearby villages (Afshar-Köy, Çukuri), to the east of Cappadocia, is not particularly close to Cappadocian. It may be closer to Pontic, or equally distant from both. The Pharasiot priest Theodoridis published some folk texts. In 2018, Metin Bağrıaçık published a thesis on Pharasiot Greek, based on speakers remaining in Greece.[35]

Silliot Greek

The Greek dialect of

Iconium/Konya) was the most divergent of the varieties of Asia Minor Greek.[citation needed
]

Italiot Greek

Location map of the Griko-speaking areas in Salento and Calabria

Griko or Italiot Greek refers to the Greek varieties spoken in some areas of southern Italy, a historical remnant of the ancient colonisation of Magna Graecia. There are two small Griko-speaking communities known as the Griko people who live in the Italian regions of Calabria, the southern tip of the Italian peninsula, and in Apulia, its south-easternmost corner. These varieties too are believed to have developed on the basis of an originally Doric ancient dialect, and have preserved some elements of it, though to a lesser extent than Tsakonian.[36] They subsequently adopted influences from ancient Koiné, but became isolated from the rest of the Greek-speaking world after the decline of Byzantine rule in Italy during the Middle Ages. Among their linguistic peculiarities, besides influences from Italian, is the preservation of the infinitive, which was lost in the modern Greek of the Balkans.

Mariupolitan

Russo-Turkish War (1768–74) to escape the then Muslim dominated Crimea.[38] Its main features present certain similarities with both the Pontic (e.g. the lack of synizesis of -ía, éa), and the northern varieties of the core dialects (e.g. the northern vocalism).[39]

Istanbul Greek

Istanbul Greek is a dialect of Greek spoken in Istanbul, as well as by the Istanbul Greek emigre community in Athens. It is characterized by a high frequency of loanwords and grammatical structures imported from other languages, the main influences being Turkish, French, Italian and Armenian,

.

Greco-Australian

Greco-Australian is an Australian-based dialect of Greek that is spoken by the Greek diaspora of Australia, including Greek immigrants living in Australia and Australians of Greek descent.[41]

Other outlying varieties

In Asia Minor, Greek varieties existed not only in the broader area of Cappadocia, but also in the western coast. The most characteristic is the dialect of

genitive cases of the definite article; the Greek speakers of the area had also incorporated into their dialect many French words. Constantinopolitan Greek, on the other side, has very few dialectal features, and it is very close to what scholars call "Modern Greek Koiné."[42]

Another Greek outlying dialect was spoken, until the mid-20th century, in

Mani dialect, and had been also influenced by both the Corsican and the French language (official language of the island after its union with France).[44]

Core dialects

Map showing the distribution of major Modern Greek dialect areas.[45] The dialect of Northern Epirus (not listed here) belongs to the southern varieties.
Map showing important isoglosses between the traditional Modern Greek dialects (c.1900).[46]
  • Purple: Area of "northern vocalism" (/skiˈli/ > [skli])
  • Yellow: Area of palatalisation of /k/ > (/kiriaˈki/ > [tʃirjaˈtʃi]
  • Green: Area of palatalisation of /k/ > [ts] (/kiriaˈki/ > [tsirjaˈtsi])
  • Brown: Geminated initial consonants (/ne/ > [nne])
  • Red: Retention of word-final /n/
  • Dark brown: Historical /y/ > /u/

Unlike the above, the varieties described below form a contiguous Greek-speaking area, which covers most of the territory of Greece. They represent the vast majority of Greek speakers today. As they are less divergent from each other and from the standard, they are typically classified as mere "idioms" rather than "dialects" by Greek authors, in the native Greek terminology.

The most prominent contrasts between the present-day dialects are found between northern and southern varieties. Northern varieties cover most of continental Greece down to the

Euboia, the Peloponnese and nearby islands), there is a "dialectal void" where no distinctly marked traditional Greek dialects are found.[47] This is due to the fact that these areas were once[when?] predominantly inhabited by speakers of Arvanitika
Albanian. The Greek spoken in this area today is the product of convergence between varieties of migrants who moved to the capital and its surroundings from various other parts of the country, and it is close to the standard. On the whole, Standard Modern Greek is based predominantly on the southern dialects, especially those of the Peloponnese.

At the fringes of this former Arvanitika-speaking area, there were once some enclaves of highly distinct traditional Greek dialects, believed to have been remnants of a formerly contiguous Greek dialect area from the time before the Arvanitic settlement. These include the old local dialect of Athens itself ("Old Athenian"), that of Megara (to the west of Attica), of Kymi in Euboia and of the island of Aegina. These dialects are now extinct.[48]

The following linguistic markers have been used to distinguish and classify the dialects of Greece. Many of these features are today characteristic only of the traditional rural vernaculars and may be socially stigmatised. Younger, urban speakers throughout the country tend to converge towards accents closer to the standard language, with Cyprus being an exception to this.

Phonological features

Grammatical features

  • Final /n/. Most Modern Greek varieties have lost word-final -n, once a part of many inflectional suffixes of Ancient Greek, in all but very few grammatical words. The south-eastern islands have preserved it in many words (e.g. [ˈipen] vs. standard [ˈipe] he said; [tiˈrin] vs. standard [tiˈri] 'cheese').[52]
  • inda? versus ti? In Standard Greek, the
    interrogative pronoun what? is ti. In most of the Aegean Islands (except at its geographical fringe: Rhodes in the south-east, Lemnos, Thasos and the Sporades in the north; and Andros in the west) as well as in Cyprus, it is inda.[57]
  • Indirect objects. All Modern Greek dialects have lost the
    indirect objects are those of the genitive case, as in example 1 below. In northern dialects, like Macedonian;[20] mainly in Thessaloniki, Constantinople, Rhodes, and in Mesa Mani, the accusative forms are used instead,[20][29] as in example 2. In plural, only the accusative forms are used both in southern and northern dialects[citation needed
    ].
     (1) Standard Greek: Σου
you.GEN
δίνω
I-give
το βιβλίο
the book
(2) Northern Greek: Σε
you.ACC
δίνω
I-give
το βιβλίο
the book
'I give you the book'

References

  1. ^ Horrocks, Geoffrey (1997): Greek: a history of the language and its speakers. London: Longman. Ch. 5.5
  2. ^ Ferguson, Charles A. (1959): "Diglossia." Word 15: 325–340.
  3. JSTOR 1291674
    . Although scholars have not been inclined to transpose to Byzantine literature the former conflict between καθαρεύουσα and δημοτική in modern Greek, the outward appearance of a clear dichotomy in learned and vernacular literature lasts, especially in the manuals, bibliography and lexica.
  4. .
  5. ^ Horrocks, ch.15.
  6. ^ Horrocks, ch.17.
  7. ^ Horrocks, ch.17.6.
  8. ^ Law 309/1976 "About the Organization and Administration of the General Education"
  9. Presidential Decree
    207/1982
  10. ^ Babiniotis (2007), 29
  11. .
  12. .
  13. ^ Browning (1983), 119: "Scholars of the generation of F.W. Mullach sought to find Dorisms and Aeolisms in the medieval and Modern Greek dialects, or even went further back, seeking the origin of certain of their characteristics in primitive "Indo-European".
  14. ^ Browning (1983), 119
    * Kontosopoulos (2007), 149
  15. ^ Kontosopoulos (2007), 149
  16. . Cretan dialect, Cyprus, literary.
  17. ^ Alexiou (2002), 29
  18. ^ For the distinction between "Greek dialects" and "Greek idioms", see Kontosopoulos, Nikolaos (1999): "Dialektoi kai idiomata". In: Manos Kopidaks et al. (eds.), Istoria tis ellinikis glossas.. Athens: Elliniko Logotechniko kai Istoriko Archeio. 188–205; Kontosopoulos (2008) 2–3; Trudgill (2003) 49 [Modern Greek dialects. A preliminary Classification, in: Journal of Greek Linguistics 4 (2003), p. 54-64] : "Dialekti are those varieties that are linguistically very different from Standard Greek [...] Idiomata are all the other varieties."
  19. ^ "Tromaktiko: Οι Νεοελληνικές διάλεκτοι".
  20. ^ .
  21. ^ Nick Nicholas. Appendix A. History & Diatopy of Greek. Archived 2004-12-06 at the Wayback Machine The story of pu: The grammaticalisation in space and time of a Modern Greek complementiser. December 1998. University of Melbourne, p. 20.
  22. ^ C.F.Voegelin; F.M. Voegelin (1977). "Tsakonian - A language of Greece". Elsevier. pp. 148–149. Archived from the original on 2012-12-10.
  23. ^ Brian Joseph. "Language Contact and the Development of Negation in Greek — and How Balkan Slavic Helps to Illuminate the Situation" (PDF). Retrieved 2009-04-07.
  24. ^ Horrocks, ch.4.4.3; C. Brixhe (2007): A modern approach to the ancient dialects, in: A. F. Christides (ed.), A history of Ancient Greek, Cambridge University Press, p.499.
  25. ^ a b c Dawkins, R.M. 1916. Modern Greek in Asia Minor. A study of dialect of Silly, Cappadocia and Pharasa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  26. ^ 500,000 (living in 300 villages) Pontic Greek speakers according to Myrtsioti, Time Resistant Dialects Archived 2011-07-21 at the Wayback Machine; 300,000 according to Trudgill (2003), 48
  27. ^ Mackridge, Peter (1987): "Greek-Speaking Moslems of North-East Turkey: Prolegomena to Study of the Ophitic Sub-Dialect of Pontic." Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 11: 115–137. Quoted in Horrocks, ch.14.2
  28. ^ Dawkins, R.M. (1916): Modern Greek in Asia Minor. A study of dialect of Silly, Cappadocia and Pharasa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Janse, The Cappadocian Language[permanent dead link].
  29. ^ .
  30. ^ Cappadocian Archived 2007-09-29 at the Wayback Machine, Roosevelt Academy; Janse, The Cappadocian Language[permanent dead link]
  31. ^ Δέδες, Δ. 1993. Ποιήματα του Μαυλανά Ρουμή. Τα Ιστορικά 10.18–19: 3–22.
  32. ^ Meyer, G. 1895. Die griechischen Verse in Rabâbnâma. Byzantinische Zeitschrift 4: 401–411.
  33. ^ "Untitled Document". Archived from the original on 2012-08-05. Retrieved 2014-10-24.
  34. ^ "The Greek Poetry of Jalaluddin Rumi". Archived from the original on 2009-06-04. Retrieved 2024-01-13.
  35. ^ Metin Bağrıaçık, Pharasiot Greek: Word order and clause structure, Ghent University, 2018.
  36. ^ Horrocks, ch.14.2.3.
  37. ^ Dawkins, Richard M. "THE PONTIC DIALECT OF MODERN GREEK IN ASIA MINOR AND RUSSIA". Transactions of the Philological Society 36.1 (1937): 15–52.
  38. ^ "Greeks of the Steppe". The Washington Post. 10 November 2012. Retrieved 25 October 2014.
  39. ^ Kontosopoulos (2008), 109
  40. ^ Matthew John Hadodo (January 2018). "Pockets of Change: Salience and Sound Change in Istanbul Greek". Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference of Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory.
  41. ^ Kalimniou, Dean (29 June 2020). "Tongues of Greek Australia: An Anglicised Hellenic language". Neos Kosmos. Retrieved 22 October 2023.
  42. ^ Kontosopoulos (2008), 114–116; Trudgill (2003), 60
  43. ^ Blanken, Gerard (1951), Les Grecs de Cargèse (Corse): Recherches sur leur langue et sur leur histoire Leiden: A. W. Sijthoff. (see review in Language 30 (1954): 278–781. [1]); Nicholas, The deletion of final /s/ in Mani and Corsica Archived 2012-02-13 at the Wayback Machine
  44. ^ See Kontosopoulos (2008), 82–83, who regards Cargese as an "idiom".
  45. ^ Map based on: Peter Trudgill (2003): Modern Greek dialects. A preliminary Classification. Journal of Greek Linguistics 4: 54–64 pdf Archived 2007-09-26 at the Wayback Machine. Shown in grey color is the core Greek-speaking area, in which Greek used to form a solid majority language among contiguous rural populations.
  46. ^ Kontosopoulos (1999); Trudgill (2003), 51.
  47. ^ Trudgill (2003), 51f.
  48. ^ Trudgill 2003: 53; Kontosopoulos 1999.
  49. ^ a b Trudgill 2003: 54.
  50. ^ Trudgill 2003: 56, quoting Newton 1972: 133.
  51. ^ a b Trudgill 2003: 57.
  52. ^ Trudgill 2003: 53, citing Newton 1972.
  53. ^ Trudgill 2003: 49, citing M. Triandaphyllides, Neoelliniki Grammatiki. Vol. 1: Istoriki Isagogi (Thessaloniki: M. Triandaphyllidis Foundation, 1938), 66-8; and C. Tzitzilis, "Neoellinikes dialekti ke neoelliniki dialektologia", in Egkiklopedikos Odigos gia ti Glossa, ed. A. F. Christidis (Thessaloniki: Kentro Ellinikis Glossas, 2001), 170.
  54. ^ Kontosopoulos 2008: 14, 66, 78.
  55. ^ The phenomenon is reported in Griko, Peloponnese, and on some Aegean islands (Kontosopoulos 2008: 74)
  56. ^ Kontosopoulos 1999.