III.

Modern Greek

Throughout the Byzantine period and the years of Ottoman domination, the Greek literary language remained largely static; the main literature produced was hagiography, theological works, and religious poetry. Toward the end of the 18th century, a rising Greek bourgeoisie, with the beginnings of a national consciousness, began to develop. Until about 1880, however, the leaders of this bourgeoisie were mainly shipowners and roving merchants who lived in Greek colonies outside Greece and based their linguistic as well as their cultural standards on an idealized Athenian heritage. In Greece proper, which remained under Ottoman rule, the energies of the people were absorbed by revolutionary activities aimed at national independence. In the 19th century, after freedom had been achieved, the Greeks faced more immediate problems than the linguistic, with the result that no uniform language was established throughout the new nation.

Late in the 19th century, Greek scholars and writers concerned themselves with a systematization of the popular tongue for purposes of education and communication. The leaders of this widespread movement were known as Demotikists, because the vernacular language is called Demotike. Prominent among such advocates were the poet Dionysios Solomos, and the French philologist of Greek descent Jean Psichari. The principal results of the movement were the creation of a vernacular grammar and the production of a large body of literary works based on the achievements, life, and customs of the people. In present-day Greece the vernacular is the chief medium of most Greek novelists and poets.

Opposed to the Demotikists were the purists, the advocates of a purified Greek (Katharevousa). These scholars aimed primarily at reawakening the Greek people to a consciousness of their ancient cultural heritage. The purists disregarded the widespread use of the written and spoken vernacular, espousing an elegant, scholarly, artificial language based on Ancient Greek and remote from the speech of everyday life. They counseled study of the ancient authors, with emphasis on the traditional stylists and poets. The leading scholars of this movement included several professors of philology at the University of Athens. As a result of the campaigns waged by the purists, the government adopted Katharevousa, but in 1976 demotic Greek became the official language by an act of Parliament. It became the language used by the government, virtually all the newspapers, and most university professors.

The purist and vernacular forms of Modern Greek differ chiefly in that the grammar, orthography, and vocabulary of the former are much closer to Ancient Greek. Phonetically the two are identical, both varying from Ancient Greek principally in the substitution of stress for pitch in accented syllables and in the altered pronunciation of vowels and diphthongs. In the word anthropoi (“men”), for example, the final diphthong oi is pronounced in Modern Greek as a single sound, the English long e.

The principal grammatical differences between Modern and Ancient Greek are in declension and verbal conjugation. In declension, Modern Greek (purist and vernacular) has abandoned two basic forms used in Ancient Greek: the dual, a form indicating that a noun, pronoun, or adjective refers to two persons or things; and the dative case, which is now used only in a few idiomatic expressions. The dual form has also been abolished from verbal conjugation, as have the optative mood (used in antiquity to indicate doubt or desire) and the infinitive. In place of the specific verb forms used to denote the various tenses in Ancient Greek, Modern Greek makes extensive use of auxiliary verbs. The Ancient Greek imperative forms have been largely supplanted by the use of an auxiliary with the subjunctive form of the verb.

In vocabulary, Modern Greek vernacular is characterized by the use of a large number of words borrowed directly from foreign languages, especially from Italian, Turkish, and French, and by a great facility for combining words. The purists, however, avoid the use of foreign words, preferring to meet the demand for new words to express new concepts by coining words based on analogous Ancient Greek expressions, striving at all times to preserve the Ancient Greek forms and idioms.