User:Future Perfect at Sunrise/Varieties of Modern Greek
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Varieties of the Modern Greek language are distinguished along two principal dimensions. First, there is a long tradition of sociolectal variation between the natural, popular spoken language on the one hand and archaizing, learned written forms of the it on the other. Second, within the spoken language, there is regional variation between dialects. The competition between the popular and the learned registers, known as diglossia, had a deep and long-lasting influence on Greek for many centuries, and culminated in the struggle between Demotic Greek and Katharevousa during the 19th and 20th centuries. As for regional dialects, variation within present-day Greek is not particularly strong, except for a number of outlying, highly divergent dialects spoken by small isolated communities.
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[edit] Diglossia: Demotic and Katharevousa
[change the following: too much narrative!] Ever since the times of Koiné Greek in Hellenistic and Roman antiquity, there had been a competition between the naturally evolving spoken forms of Greek on the one hand, and the use of artificially archaic, learned registers of Greek on the other. Educated speakers and writers, although acquiring and using popular spoken Greek as their mother tongue, employed the learned register for literary and official purposes, using grammatical and lexical forms in imitation of classical Attic Greek (Atticism). This situation is known in modern linguistics as Diglossia.
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 Demotic. 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 Greed church. It syntax was essentially Modern Greek. After the Greek War of Independence and the formation of the modern Greek state (1830), an 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'). It was still a compromise form with basically Modern Greek syntax, but re-lexified with a much larger amount of Ancient Greek words and morphology. Thus it stood in much more marked contrast to spoken Demotic than the older written registers. 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. [...]
[edit] Dialects of Demotic
[edit] Outlying dialects
[treat Tsakonian, Pontic, Italian dialects, ...]
[edit] Historic literary dialects
[treat early modern Cretan literature etc.]
[edit] Modern spoken dialects
[...]
This map shows two of the principal Isoglosses dividing the dialects of Modern Greek.
- Red line: boundary of the area with "Northern Vocalism" (i.e. hightening of unstressed /e,o/ > /i,u/ and deletion of original unstressed /i,u/).
- Dotted red line: areas with semi-Northern vocalic features (also includes Constantinople)
- Dark grey line: Insular dialects using "είντα?" 'what?' instead of "τί?". Also includes Cyprus.
- Yellow box: Tsakonian.
- Grey shading: Central area of "dialectal void" (former Arvanitika-speaking areas lacking traditional local Greek dialects.
[edit] References
- Kontosopoulos, Nikolaos (1999): "Διάλεκτοι και ιδιώματα" ['Dialects and Idioms']. In: Kopidakis et al., 188–205.
- Kopidaks, Manos et al. (eds.) (1999): Ιστορία της ελληνικής γλώσσας. ['History of the Greek language']. Athens: Ελληνικό Λογοτεχνικό και Ιστορικό Αρχείο.
