The Greek language question (, ) was a dispute about whether the vernacular of the Greek people (Demotic Greek) or a cultivated literary language based on Ancient Greek (Katharevousa) should be the prevailing language of the people and government of Greece. It was a highly controversial topic in the 19th and 20th centuries, and was finally resolved in 1976 when Demotic was made the official language. The language phenomenon in question, which also occurs elsewhere in the world, is called diglossia.
Linguistic background While Demotic was the vernacular of the Greeks, Katharevousa was an archaic and formal variant that was pronounced like Modern Greek, but it adopted both lexical and morphological features of Ancient Greek that the spoken language had lost over time. Examples: Morphological features: Strict Katharevousa used the ancient dative case, many participles and various additional tenses and conjugational patterns of verbs. Phonological features: Katharevousa contained various spelling pronunciations that did not fit the Modern Greek phonological system. For example, νδρ (Ancient and Demotic /ndr/, Katharevousa /nðr/); φθ (Ancient /pʰtʰ/), [α]υθ, [ε]υθ: Demotic /ft/, Katharevousa /fθ/; σθ; ρθρ. Syntactical features: While the vernacular mostly consisted of simple sentences (parataxis), Katharevousa often applied ancient Greek syntax to form long and complex sentences (syntaxis), which would give the impression of educated speech and reflect the tenor of the ancient corpus. Lexical features: The proponents of the formal language discarded many popular Greek words that the Greek language had borrowed from other languages over time, mainly from Turkish, Latin and Italian, and replaced them either with ancient Greek words or with neologisms. Similarly, words of Ancient Greek origin but now in modern form were archaised or replaced by their standard Ancient Greek equivalents (like the Ancient Greek for 'fish' or the archaised form for the modern 'small chapel').
These differences meant that Katharevousa was only partly intelligible to a Greek without higher education. There was no single Katharevousa. Instead, proponents of the formal language put forward ever-changing variants that were never standardized. These variants approached Attic Greek in extreme cases, but they could also be closer to spoken Greek and could thus be understood by the majority of the people.
Sample text The Greek language question concerns the co-existence of two forms of Greek that sometimes differ significantly. Such differences can greatly exceed common stylistic differences between written and spoken or formal and informal forms of language, as demonstrated in the following text:Text of the Holy Synod of Greece regarding an approval for its content. Athens, April 29, 1902.
Katharevousa:
Demotic:
Modern English:
Historical development
Pre-revolutionary discussions (1766–1830) The discussion began at the end of the 18th century, as Eugenios Voulgaris (1716–1806), Lambros Photiadis, St. Kommitas and Neophytos Doukas, who were proponents of a more archaic language, and Voulgaris' students Iosipos Moisiodax (1725–1800) and Dimitrios Katartzis ( –1807), who proposed a simpler language, began to voice their opinions. The phanariots were a group of conservative and educated nobles who supported the archaic language and were the most important critics of the language of the people. This discussion later became crucial when it was to be decided which one should be the single language of the modern Greek state, which was yet to be founded. Adamantios Korais (1748–1833) influenced the further discussion considerably. While being a supporter of the language of the people, Korais sought to cleanse it from elements that he considered to be too "vulgar" and eventually invented Katharevousa. After a prolonged War of Independence, the modern Greek state was founded in 1830; the first capital was Nafplio and, from 1834 onwards, Athens.
Katharevousa as the language of the newborn state (1830–80)
Adoption of Katharevousa
Publishing had been brought almost to a halt by the war, and with it the intellectual debate, but by 1830 an informal consensus had been reached that the new state should have a unified written language modeled on Korais' version of Katharevousa; "... the romantic-classical ideology of the new state that emerged from [the War] could not condone the use of 'vulgar' spoken Greek; instead it installed the linguistic compromise solution advocated by Korais as a provisional measure until such time as Ancient Greek could be fully revived. What was perhaps intended to be a temporary stop-gap, however, eventually became firmly entrenched as the established form of Greek in official use".Mackridge (2009), p. 158
The adoption, however, was not expressed in formal or legal terms specifying Katharevousa as "the language of the state". To do so would have dashed the hopes of the many who hoped that Ancient Greek itself would one day take over that role. It would also have been difficult to specify to a legal standard of precision exactly what was meant by "Katharevousa glossa" (at the time, Katharevousa was still an adjective). In fact, the only mention of language in legislation appeared in the educational laws of 1834 and 1836, which established that Ancient Greek (not Katharevousa) should continue to be the only language of the readers and textbooks used in schools.
There was also no official body to make such decisions: "It is characteristic of the Greek case that, while language reforms in other new states were undertaken with the help of official and semi-official bodies, Katharevousa was developed in an empirical and unsystematic fashion, without congresses, commissions, and academies, and with little official support".Mackridge (2009), p. 164
Korais himself (though an admirer of the legislated clarity and precision of French) explicitly rejected the idea of a top-down imposition of language standards by a body modelled on the Académie française. As a secular republican in language as well as in politics, he rejected this "tyranny" and favoured an informal "parliamentary" model; the poets and prose writers are the "legislators", "elected" by the size of their readership, and they have a duty to guide the language wisely by their majority opinion and their example. Guidance is necessary, to avoid the "mob rule" of undisciplined and uncorrected Demotic, but ultimate authority still lies with the people, whose judgement over the long term decides which works and writers are "elected" as the classics to be emulated.
In line with these principles, Korais took great pains not to appear to be a one-man Académie. Much of his writing on the language question was published in the prefaces to his 16-volume Hellenic Library series of ancient Greek texts, and they were modestly titled "Impromptu thoughts on Greek culture and language". Most of his other linguistic studies were issued as five collected volumes under the even more self-effacing title Atakta, a "jumbled miscellany". It has even been suggested that "the chief reason why Korais did not publish a grammar of Modern Greek was precisely that he wanted to avoid legislating on grammatical matters".
In 1833, the year of Korais' death, a new collected edition of his "Impromptu thoughts..." prefaces was published, making his ideas available to a much wider audience than before and providing a linguistic example to follow.
Two of his ideas in particular had widespread influence: his admiration of Ancient Greek beauty, and his belief in the necessity of "correcting" the modern language. The rhetoric of the time is "full of adjectives such as 'correct', 'rich', 'pure', 'noble' and even 'sacred' to describe Ancient Greek and/or Katharevousa and their antonyms 'ungrammatical', 'poor', 'corrupt' or 'adulterated', 'vulgar' or 'base', and 'profane' or even 'blasphemous' to refer to Demotic".
Foreign loanwords were especially reviled. As Korais had written, "To borrow from foreigners—or, to speak more clearly, to beg words and phrases, with which the storerooms of one's language are already replete—creates a reputation for complete ignorance or even idiocy as well as dishonour". Translated in Mackridge (2009), p. 113
In this intellectual climate, the population set to work with enthusiasm to restore the national honour by "correcting" the Greek vocabulary. Alehouses and brewers took down the signs saying (from Italian ) and put up 'ale-house'. Grocers took down (from Turkish ) and put up while various academics and professionals devised and issued (at the invitation of the state) vocabularies appropriate to their fields; the more "official" the field, the more like Ancient Greek the new vocabulary appeared.
For example, the newly formed Royal Hellenic Navy introduced the use of Ancient Greek nautical terms although civilian seamen continued to use the traditional ones, many of them loanwords from Italian, owing to the centuries-old maritime influence of Venice and Genoa, and with borrowings from the Italian-based Mediterranean Lingua Franca of the Levantine ports. Summarized in Mackridge (2009), p.164
Hopes in the 1830s
In Athens, the new capital, now that Katharevousa had been accepted for official purposes, most hopes for the future were concentrated on "ennobling" and "correcting" everyday speech; outside the Ionian Islands (which would not become part of the Greek state until 1864), very few now argued for the use of "uncorrected" Demotic as the language of the state. Quite apart from its supposed inadequacy and vulgarity, there had been another political and diplomatic reason to rule out using Demotic as the state language. In 1830 the population of the new Greek state was about 800,000; but outside the borders were at least two million more Greek-speakers (mainly in the remaining provinces of the Ottoman Empire and the British-controlled Ionian Islands), and millions more members of the Greek Orthodox Church who worshiped in Koine Greek and shared much Greek culture even though they spoke other languages such as Albanian or Aromanian at home. At this early stage of the Greek state, it was far from clear how large its borders would ultimately be and whether citizenship would depend on language, religion, or simple residence. It was recognized, though, that if Demotic had become the state language, it might well have alienated millions of non-Greek speaking Orthodox believers within the potentially much larger future borders.
Among the believers in "correction", hopes were still divided between those who pushed for the full resurrection of Ancient Greek (bringing with it "Truth and Freedom", as Soutsos put it later), and the majority who believed with Korais that this was quite unrealistic but that Demotic could still be "corrected" to the less demanding level of Katharevousa. Both believed wholeheartedly in the power of the written language to transform the spoken one; they hoped that the "pure" forms would naturally trickle down to replace the "corrupted" Demotic ones and that the spoken language would thus be pulled up to a "richer" and "nobler" level.
There was also a moral and spiritual side to linguistic "correction". Korais had believed, "Because of their enslavement to foreign rulers, the Modern Greeks were incapable of thinking properly and thus of speaking properly; the correction of language would, however, lead to the correction of both thought and behaviour". It was hoped that as the damage done to the spoken language by centuries of subjection to "Oriental despotism" was gradually repaired, the Greeks would begin to think more like their rational, critical and creative ancestors, and that the political and cultural life of the nation would thus be revitalized.