[B-Greek] peri katharevousa kai demotikh

Curtis Hinson curtis at curtishinson.com
Wed Oct 12 12:26:53 EDT 2005


GEIA SAS

I have been doing a little investigation and reflection on the issue I 
brought up. I found one source from Kritis and one from Kypros, both of 
which claim that katharevousa has a different phonology than demotiki.  
Kypros.org (a great resource by the way) actually gives technical 
details on the differences in pronunciation in their board archives.

That would address the orthographic concern I had.  I also observe that 
not all info out there is unbiased because of the politically charged 
nature of diglossia in Greece: there's propaganda out there, in other 
words, that wants to dismiss it as an artifice, but that may not be the 
whole truth.  I encountered in a couple of places the claim that 
katharevousa has no native folk sayings of it's own -- seemingly a false 
claim, as demotiki incorporates quite a number of stylistically 
identifiable "katharevousisms".

I suspect katharevousa is not entirely an artificial creation, but a 
standardization or formalization of one or more subsets of the living 
language.  From looking at it I have suspected it has more in common 
with late Koine/Byzantine Greek than "classical" Greek (perhaps liturgy 
had something to do with that).  I also suspect that due to katharevousa 
falling somewhat into obscurity for the present generation in mainland 
Greece (but less Kypros, where it enjoys more harmony or co-usage with 
demotiki), the uninitiated Greek when encountering it would pronounce it 
in a demotiki way. 

http://www.factbites.com/topics/Katharevousa

Bless the Name
Curtis Hinson




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