[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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