(Redirected from Demotic Greek)
'Modern Greek' (Νέα Ελληνικά or Νεοελληνική, lit. 'Neo-Hellenic', historically also known as Ρωμαίικα, lit. 'Romaic') refers to the fifth stage of the evolution of the
Greek language, i.e. the varieties of Greek spoken in the modern era. Greek is spoken today by approximately 14-17 million people, mainly in
Greece and
Cyprus but also by minority and immigrant communities in many other countries. The start of the period of the Greek language known as "Modern Greek" is symbolically assigned in the fall of the
Byzantine Empire (
1453), although strictly speaking it has been shaped since at least the 11th century. During much of this time, the language existed in a situation of
diglossia, with regional spoken dialects existing side by side with learned, archaic written forms. Most notably, during much of the 19th and 20th centuries, it was known in the competing varieties of popular Demotic and learned
Katharevousa. Today, 'Standard Modern Greek', a standardised form of Demotic, is the official language of both Greece and Cyprus.
Classification
Greek forms an independent branch of the
Indo-European languages. Within Greek, all surviving forms of Modern Greek, except the
Tsakonian dialect, are descendants of the common supra-regional (
Koiné) as it was spoken in late antiquity. As such, they can ultimately be classified as descendants of
Attic, the dialect spoken in and around
Athens in the classical era.
Tsakonian, an isolated dialect spoken today by a dwindling community in the
Peloponese, is a descendant of the ancient
Doric dialect. Some other dialects have preserved elements of various ancient non-Attic dialects, but Attic Koiné is nevertheless regarded by most scholars as the principal source of all of them.
Geographic distribution
Modern Greek is spoken by about 14-17 million people mainly in
Greece and
Cyprus. There are also Greek-speaking populations in
Georgia,
Bulgaria,
Ukraine,
Russia,
Egypt,
Turkey,
Palestine,
Albania, the
Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and
Southern Italy. The language is spoken also in many other countries where Greeks have settled, including
Argentina,
Armenia,
Australia,
Austria,
Belgium,
Brazil,
Canada,
Denmark,
France,
Spain,
Germany,
Netherlands,
Switzerland,
South Africa,
Sweden,
Norway,
United Kingdom, and the
United States.
Official status
Greek is the
official language of
Greece where it is spoken by about 99.5% of the population. It is also, alongside
Turkish and
English, the official language of
Cyprus. Because of the membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the
23 official languages of the
European Union.
Varieties
The main
dialects of Modern Greek are:
★ 'Demotic Greek' (Δημοτική): Strictly speaking "Demotic" refers to all ''popular'' varieties of Modern Greek which followed a common evolution path from
Koine and have retained a high degree of
mutual intelligibility to the present day. As shown in Ptochoprodromic and
Acritic poems, Demotic Greek was already before the 11th century the vernacular, "Roman" language of the
Byzantine Greeks, notably in peninsular
Greece, the
Greek islands, coastal
Asia Minor,
Constantinople and
Cyprus. Today, a standardised variety of Demotic Greek is the official language of the
Hellenic Republic (Greece) and Cyprus, and is referred to as the "Standard Modern Greek", or less strictly simply as "Modern Greek" or "Demotic".
:Demotic Greek comprises various regional varieties with minor linguistic differences, mainly in phonology and vocabulary. Due to their high degree of mutual intelligibility, Greek linguists refer to those varieties as "idioms" of a wider "Demotic dialect", known as "Koine Modern Greek" (''Koini Neoelliniki'' - 'common Neo-Hellenic'). Most English-speaking linguistics tend to refer to them as "dialects", emphasising degrees of variation only when necessary. Demotic Greek varieties are divided into two main groups, Northern and Southern:
:Examples of Northern dialects are
Rumelian,
Epirote,
Thessalian,
Macedonian,
Thracian.
:The Southern category is divided into groups that include variety groups from:
:#
Megara,
Aegina,
Athens,
Cyme (Old Athenian) and
Mani Peninsula (Maniot)
:#
Peloponnese (except Mani),
Cyclades and
Crete,
Ionian Islands,
Northern Epirus,
Smyrna and
Constantinople
:#
Dodecanese and
Cyprus.
:Demotic Greek has officially been taught in
monotonic Greek script since 1982. Polytonic script remains popular in intellectual circles.
★ '
Katharevousa' (Καθαρεύουσα): A semi-artificial
sociolect promoted in the 19th century at the foundation of the modern Greek state, as a compromise between
Classical Greek and modern Demotic. It was the official language of modern Greece until 1976. Katharevousa is written in
polytonic Greek script. Also, while Demotic Greek contains loanwords from Turkish, Italian, Latin, and other languages, these have for the most part been purged from Katharevousa.
★ '
Tsakonian' (Τσακωνικά): Spoken in its full form today only in a small number of villages around the city of
Sparta in the region of
Laconia in Southern
Peloponnese, but partially spoken further afield in the area. Tsakonian evolved directly from Laconian (ancient Spartan) and therefore descends from the
Doric branch of the Greek language. It has limited input from Hellenistic Koine and is significantly different from all its daughter dialects (such as
Demotic Greek and
Pontic).
★ '
Pontic' (Ποντιακά): Originally spoken in the
Pontus region of
Asia Minor until most of its speakers were displaced to mainland Greece during the great population exchange between Greece and Turkey that followed the Destruction of
Smyrna. It hails from
Hellenistic and
Medieval Koine but preserves characteristics of
Ionic since ancient colonisations. Pontic evolved as a separate dialect from Demotic Greek as a result of the region's isolation from the Greek mainstream that followed the
Battle of Manzikert.
★ '
Cappadocian' (Καππαδοκικά): A dialect close to and of the same fate as Pontic. Hails directly from the Alexandrian dialect, and its speakers settled in mainland Greece during the great population exchanges.
★ 'Southern Italian' or 'Italiot' (Κατωιταλιώτικα ): Comprising both
Calabrian and
Griko varietes, it is spoken by around 15 villages in the regions of
Calabria and
Apulia. The Southern Italian dialect is the last living trace of Hellenic elements in Southern Italy that once formed
Magna Graecia. Its origins can be traced to the
Dorian Greek settlers who colonised the area from
Sparta and
Corinth in 700 BC. However, it has received significant Koine Greek influence through
Byzantine Greek colonisers who re-introduced Greek language to the region, starting with
Justinian's conquest of
Italy in late antiquity and continuing through the Middle Ages. Griko and Demotic are mutually intelligible to some extent, but the former shares some common characteristics with Tsakonian.
★ '
Yevanic': A recently extinct language of
Romaniote Jews. The language was already in decline for centuries until most of its speakers were killed in the
Holocaust. Afterward, the language was mostly kept by remaining Romaniote emigrants to
Israel, where it was displaced by
Modern Hebrew.
Demotic as Koiné (Standard) Modern Greek
'Koiné Modern Greek' (Κοινή Νεοελληνική) refers to the
idiom of Demotic that was chosen as the official language of the
Hellenic Republic and
Cyprus. In English it is usually referred to as Standard Modern Greek. In its pure form it is spoken mainly in the urban parts of Greece, while its various idioms are the
vernacular language of most rural Greece and the Greek
Diaspora throughout the world. Koiné Modern Greek evolves from the Southern Demotic idioms, mainly the ones of
Peloponnese.
In short, Koiné Modern Greek is the natural continuation of
Koine Greek, an ancient Greek dialect (known also as the "Alexandrian language") which came into existence after the conquests of
Alexander the Great and the
Hellenization of the known world. Hellenistic Koiné had assimilated many elements from various different Greek dialects (such as
Ionic,
Doric and
Aeolic) but its nucleus had always been
Attic (the dialect of
Athens). Hellenistic Koine had been spoken in several different forms in the region of Greece and the Greek speaking world during the entire
Hellenistic,
Roman and
Byzantine periods, until it took the shape of Demotic in the Middle Ages.
After Greece gained independence from the
Ottoman Empire, the same dual-language status of the late
Byzantine Empire was re-adapted. The vernacular speech was Demotic (a term similar to "popular") and the official state dialect was
Katharevousa ("purified"). Demotic was the language of daily use, and the latter was an archaic form (closer to Attic), used for official documents, literature, newscasting and other formal purposes. In 1976 Katharevousa was replaced by Demotic as the official language of the Greek state.
During its long history the Greek language assimilated vocabulary from various languages such as
Latin,
Italian, and
Ottoman Turkish, a substantial part of which lapsed during its long-lasting co-existence with Katharevousa.
Phonology
Main articles: Modern Greek phonology
A series of radical
sound shifts, which the Greek language underwent mainly during the period of
Koine, has led to a phonological system in Modern Greek that is significantly different from that of Ancient Greek. Instead of the rich vowel system of Ancient Greek, with its four vowel-height levels, length distinction, and multiple diphthongs, Modern Greek has a very simple system of five vowels. This came about through a series of mergers, especially towards /i/ (
iotacism). In the consonants, Modern Greek has two series of
fricatives in lieu of the Ancient Greek
voiced and
aspirated voiceless plosives. Modern Greek has not preserved length distinctions, either in the vowels or in the consonants.
Writing system
Main articles: Greek orthography
Main articles: Greek alphabet
Modern Greek is written in the Greek alphabet, which has 24 letters, each with a capital and lowercase (small) form. The letter
sigma additionally has a special final form. There are two diacritical symbols, the
acute accent which indicates
stress and the
diaeresis marking a vowel letter as not being part of a
digraph. Greek has a mixed historical and phonemic
orthography, where historical spellings are used if their pronunciation matches modern usage. The correspondence between consonant
phonemes and
graphemes is largely unique,
[1] but several of the vowel phonemes can be spelled in multiple ways.
[2] Thus
reading is easy but
spelling is difficult.
[3]
A number of diacritical signs were used until 1982, when they were officially dropped from Greek spelling as no longer corresponding to the modern pronunciation of the language. See
monotonic orthography for the simplified modern set, and
polytonic orthography for the traditional set. Monotonic orthography is today used in official usage, in schools and for most purposes of everyday writing in Greece. Polytonic orthography, besides being used for older varieties of Greek, is still used in book printing, especially for academic and belletristic purposes, and in everyday use by some conservative writers and elderly people. The Greek Orthodox Church continues to use polytonic and Archbishop
Christodoulos of Athens
[4] and the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece
[5] have requested the reintroduction of polytonic as the official script.
The Greek vowel letters with their pronunciation are: <α> , <ε> , <η> , <ι> , <ο> , <υ> , <ω> . There are also vowel digraphs which are phonetically monophthongal: <αι> , <ει> , <οι> , <ου> , <υι> . The three digraphs <αυ>, <ευ> and <ηυ> are pronounced , and except when followed by voiced consonants or vowels, in which case they are pronounced , and respectively.
Modern Greek has also four diphthongs: <αη> (or <άη>) , <αϊ> (or <άι>) , <οη> (or <όη>) and <οϊ> (or <όι>) (diphthongs can better be transcribed using the IPA non-syllabic diacritic under instead of the approximant ).
The Greek letters <β> and <δ> are pronounced and respectively. The letter <γ> is generally pronounced , but before the mid or close front vowels, it is pronounced (or and in some dialects, notably those of Crete and the Mani). Μoreover, before the mid or close back vowels, tends to be pronounced further back than a prototypical velar, between a velar and an uvular (transcribed ).
The letters <θ>, <φ> and <χ> are pronounced , and respectively. The letter <χ>, before mid or close front vowels, is pronounced (or and in some dialects, notably those of Crete and the Mani) and before the mid or close back vowels, tends to be pronounced as a postvelar . The letter <ξ> stands for and <ψ> stands for . The digraphs <γγ> and <γκ> are generally pronounced in everyday speech, but are pronounced before the front vowels and and tend to be pronounced before the back and . When these digraphs are preceded by a vowel, they are pronounced in formal speech ( before the front vowels and and before the back and ). The digraph <γγ> may be pronounced in some words ( before front vowels and before back ones). The pronunciation for the digraph <γκ> is extremely rare, but could be heard in literary and scholarly words or when reading ancient texts (by a few readers); whereas retains its "original" pronunciation only in the trigraph <γκτ> where <τ> prevents the sonorization of <κ> by <γ> (hence ).
Grammar
Main articles: Modern Greek grammar
Modern Greek is still largely a
synthetic language. It is one of the few Indo-European languages that has retained a synthetic
passive. Noticeable changes in grammar (compared to classical Greek) include the loss of the
dative case, the
optative mood, the
infinitive, the
dual number, and the
participles (except the past participle); the adoption of the
gerund; the reduction in the number of noun
declensions, and the number of distinct forms in each declension; the adoption of the
modal particle '' (a contraction of '' > '' > '' > '') to denote future and conditional tenses; the introduction of
auxiliary verb forms for certain tenses; the extension to the future tense of the aspectual distinction between present/imperfect and aorist; the loss of the third person imperative, and the simplification of the system of grammatical prefixes, such as
augmentation and
reduplication. Some of these features are shared with other languages spoken in the Balkan peninsula (see
Balkan linguistic union), although not others, such as the postposed article.
Because of the influence of Katharevousa, however, Demotic is not commonly used in its purest form, and
archaisms are still widely used, especially in writing and in more formal speech, as well as in some everyday expressions, such as the dative ('OK', literally 'in order') or the third person imperative ! ('long live!').
Examples
Some common words and phrases
★ Greek (man): <Έλληνας> [].
★ Greek (woman): <Ελληνίδα> [].
★ Greek (language): <Ελληνικά> [].
★ good morning: <καλημέρα> [].
★ good evening: <καλησπέρα> [].
★ good night: <καληνύχτα> [].
★ good-bye: <χαίρετε> [] (formal); <αντίο> [] (semi-formal); <γεια σου> [] or <γεια σας> [] (informal).
★ please: <παρακαλώ> [].
★ sorry: <συ(γ)γνώμη> [].
★ thank you: <ευχαριστώ> [].
★ that: <αυτό> [], <(ε)κείνο> [].
★ this: <αυτό> [], <(ε)τούτο> [].
★ yes: <ναι> [].
★ no: <όχι> [].
★ generic toast: <εις υγείαν!> [] (literally "to health") or more colloquially: <γεια μας!> [] (literally "our health").
★ juice: <χυμός> [].
★ water: <νερό> [].
★ wine: <κρασί> [].
References
★
Ιστορία της ελληνικής γλώσσας: (τέσσερις μελέτες) (History of the Greek language: four studies), , Νικόλαος Π. (Nikolaos P.), Ανδριώτης (Andriotis), Ίδρυμα Τριανταφυλλίδη, 1995, ISBN 960-231-058-8
★
Storia della letteratura neogreca, , Mario, Vitti, Carocci, 2001, ISBN 88-430-1680-6
External links
★
Greek online course "Greek by Radio" from Cyprus radio broadcasting CyBC in English, 105 lessons with Real audio files
Footnotes
1. Exceptions include the spelling of /z/, which may be spelled <σ> or <ζ> and the pronunciation of <ντ>, which may be pronounced /nt/, /nd/, or /d/.
2. ''cf.'' Iotacism
3. G. Th. Pavlidis and V. Giannouli, "Spelling Errors Accurately Differentiate USA-Speakers from Greek Dyslexics: Ιmplications for Causality and Treatment" ''in'' R.M. Joshi ''et al.'' (eds) ''Literacy Acquisition: The Role of Phonology, Morphology and Orthography''. Washington, 2003. ISBN 1586033603
4. «Φιλιππικός» Χριστόδουλου κατά του μονοτονικού συστήματος
5. Την επαναφορά του πολυτονικού ζητά η Διαρκής Ιερά Σύνοδος
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