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| Issue 01, May 2006 |
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| homepage > Interview
with Peter Mackridge |
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Peter
Mackridge
INTERVIEW
with Leda Bouzali |
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The
Phenomenon of Diglossia
Language and National Identity |
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Peter
Mackridge, the distinguished linguist and former Professor
of Modern Greek at Oxford University, has dedicated
his life to the study of Greek language and
literature. His work The Modern Greek Language (Oxford
University Press, 1985, Greek translation published
by Patakis, 1991) is used as a textbook in
many Greek university courses. His books also
include two grammars of the Greek language
(the Comprehensive Grammar and the Essential
Grammar), which he co-wrote with David Holton
and Irene Philippaki-Warburton (Routledge,
1997 and 2004). The Greek edition of the former
was published by Patakis Publishers in 1999.
He has also written numerous articles on the
history and the dialects of the Greek language,
the phenomenon of diglossia and the language
question. As a scholar of modern Greek literature,
he has published dozens of articles on Solomos,
Cavafy, Politis, Prevelakis, Seferis and Tachtsis.
He has also translated works by Prevelakis,
Alexandrou, Patrikios, Tachtsis, Ioannou and
Seferis. His work “Plaster Casts of Poetry:
Solomos-Kavafis-Seferis”, written in Greek,
is currently being published by Hestia editions.
Peter Mackridge visited Athens in October 2005,
as an honorable guest of the Onassis Foundation. |
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| ΑΩ met him for a discussion on
Greek language. |
| ΑΩ: What
do you expect will be the outcome of your current
research? |
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| P.M.: I will write a book in English,
under the provisional title “Language and National
Identity in Greece since the 18th century”. It
will be a new history of the Greek language controversy,
which began in the 1760s with Evgenios Voulgaris
and Iosipos Misiodax and officially ended 200 years
later with the Education Act of 1976, after the
fall of the military dictatorship. The course of
events of the last 30 years will be covered in
a brief afterword. The focus of my research is
the period dating from the Greek Enlightenment
and the War of Independence, through Korais, Psycharis,
Hatzidakis and Triandaphyllidis, to the restoration
of democracy in 1974. |
| ΑΩ: What
is the target-group of your book? |
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| P.M.: The book will address an English-speaking
readership, unfamiliar with the Greek language question.
Outside Greece, there is great confusion about this
issue and I have come across many inaccuracies in
books written by non-Greeks who do not specialize
in Greek matters. In a recent book on diglossia in
Arabic, for instance, I read that the New Testament
was written in katharevousa (“purified”
Greek). This shows complete ignorance. Katharevousa is
a recent phenomenon. It was created by Korais and
various literary figures, scholars and journalists
of the 19th century. The first reference to the term katharevousa is
found in a book published by Nikephoros Theotokis
in 1796. The first instance of the term demotiki (demotic)
is found in a book by Panayiotis Kodrikas published
in 1818. Until the middle of the 19th century very
few people referred to katharevousa,
and the term dimotiki was hardly used either.
Between 1830 and the 1870s or 1880s, the language
controversy seemed to have been solved in favour
of katharevousa. |
| Α.Ω.: What
was the case before 1830? |
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| P.M.: There was complete freedom
or chaos – depending on how one chooses to see it.
There were the “archaists” who were trying to write
in Ancient Greek, usually in the Attic dialect or
in ancient Greek Koine (the language of
the New Testament) and there were the “vernacularists”
who were using a language resembling the spoken language
of the time, be it regional (e.g. that spoken in
Constantinople or in Yannina), or more widespread.
Most writers used a blend of archaic and modern features.
Before Georgios Hatzidakis, who was the first to
study the Medieval Greek language, Greeks saw their
language in terms of two chief varieties: the ancient
language and the “everyday Greek language” or “common
dialect” or “simple Greek”, since the term “Modern
Greek” had not yet been established. People were
not aware of the evolution of language because the
medieval stages of the language had not been studied. |
| Α.Ω.: Where
does the question of national pride come in? |
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P.M.: Most scholars, like Korais,
thought of the spoken Modern Greek language – the
one we today refer to as demotic – as vulgar and
corrupt. Any kind of deviation from the ancient
forms was considered to be a corruption, an error.
Korais wanted to “correct” the modern language
according to the rules of Ancient Greek grammar.
He was one of the first to raise the question of
national pride and national shame. He was proud
of the ancient origin of the Greeks, but he was
ashamed, especially in the presence of Western
Europeans in Paris, of what he considered to be
the “degeneration” and the “sad state” of the spoken
Greek language. He had lived abroad for decades,
and as an expatriate he had little familiarity
with everyday spoken Greek, but he knew from his
early years in Smyrna (Izmir) that the Modern Greek
language was full of Turkish and Italian words
and phrases, and he felt ashamed. This is where
the question of national identity comes in.
The supporters of katharevousa wanted to create a written language which,
on the one hand, would derive from spoken Modern Greek, but would be corrected
according to the rules of ancient Greek morphology on the other, so that it would
outwardly resemble Ancient Greek as much as possible. It was a matter of “image”.
In other words, their aim was to show that the Greeks, because of their language,
were very much like their ancestors and that they cherished and looked after
their language by correcting it and modifying it. On the contrary, the supporters
of demotic, such as Triandaphyllidis, Seferis and others, reversed the question
of pride. They, too, were proud of the origin of the Greeks, but they were ashamed
of katharevousa, because they thought of it as an artificial language,
which failed to represent the Modern Greeks, or rather depicted them as a nation
of filing clerks, so to speak, and not as a proud people with generosity of heart.
Folklorists, such as Nikolaos Politis, had proved that the Greek folk song (composed
in demotic) was a genuine, spontaneous expression of the Greek soul. After the
Memoirs of Makryiannis were published by Giannis Vlachogiannis, 20 to 30 years
passed before they were read by writers of the 1930s such as Seferis and Theotokas,
who discovered in Makryiannis the common Greek hero of the War of Independence.
The modernists were proud of the common people who had fought to create the new
Greek state and who had a culture of their own, which was the continuation of
ancient Greek civilization, but had its own individuality and its own language
that stemmed naturally from Ancient Greek rather than being the result of a determined
effort. |
| ΑΩ: All in
all, what was the outcome of this controversy?
Did it affect the Greek language positively or
negatively? |
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P.M.: This is the most difficult
question to answer and the most complex issue among
those that trouble me in my research. I have to
make clear from the outset that katharevousa was
not totally harmful. Katharevousa had
a positive effect on the lexicon, that is, in the
formation of new words such as πανεπιστήμιο (university), ποδήλατο (bicycle), λεωφορείο (bus), δημοσιογράφος (journalist).
All these words were formed in the 19th century
by writers who were using katharevousa.
They derive directly from ancient Greek words and
are not from the lexicon and morphology of demotic.
They are widely accepted and have become established.
Those who wrote in katharevousa used loan-translations of words and
phrases from foreign languages, such as the expression εντάξει (in order)which
appears to be ancient (εν+the dative case), but in reality is a loan-translation
of the German expression “in Ordnung”, which was introduced by the Bavarians
during King Otto’s reign. Eν+the dative case, in its
literal, spatial meaning of “in”, is obsolete today. It is used only in its metaphorical
sense. Katharevousa is a language of metaphor and loan-translation.
I am not aware of any language apart from Modern Greek that makes such a distinction
between literal and metaphorical meanings. For me, as a linguist, this kind of
distinction is harmful. For reasons I have not yet understood, Greeks insisted
on making this type of distinction: demotic was the language of literal sense,
a natural, down-to-earth language, whereas katharevousa was the language
of metaphorical meanings, of loan-translations and abstract ideas. These two
streams still flow side-by-side within the Greek language today, and I am afraid
that the necessary fusion between the expression of literal and metaphorical
meaning has not yet been achieved. |
| ΑΩ: Do you
believe that this will be achieved in the future?
Is the latest fashion, which involves the use of
archaized forms of modern words, perhaps a sign
of that? |
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P.M.: Younger scholars in Greek
universities tend to use many archaic features
that are often redundant. This is not just a case
of showing off, but also an effort to establish
a scholarly, abstract style that differs markedly
from the spoken language. This is the modern tendency
that corresponds to the old katharevousa:
to make a distinction between written and spoken
language. I do not mean the substitution of foreign
(English) words by Greek, but the substitution
of demotic words by archaic ones. […] In my opinion,
this is pretentious.
In Britain there is an opposite trend. Our written and spoken languages have
come closer together and there is a tendency among scholars to write simply.
In Greece today, written language is tending to diverge from spoken usage, as
it did in the Korais’s time. In this case, the written language is more becoming
complex, perhaps more baroque. |
| Α.Ω.: Who
is your favourite poet? |
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P.M.: Solomos, Kavafis and Seferis.
All three were troubled by the question of language.
I believe that these poets, together with Ritsos and Elytis, have exploited and
expanded the metaphorical capacities of demotic, capacities that have been ignored
by non-literary writers. The intense and concerted struggle these poets waged
in favour of the Greek language is what has saved it… |
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