This is a history of the great language controversy that has occupied and empassioned Greeks - sometimes with fatal results - for over two hundred years. It begins in the late eighteenth-century when a group of Greek intellectuals sought to develop a new, Hellenic, national identity alongside the traditional identity supplied by Orthodox Christianity. The ensuing controversy focused on the language, fuelled on the one hand by a desire to develop a form of Greek that expressed the Greeks' relationship to the ancients, and on the other by the different groups' contrasting notions of what the national image so embodied should be. The purists wanted a written language close to the ancient. The vernacularists - later known as demoticists - sought to match written language to spoken, claiming the latter to be the product of the unbroken development of Greek since the time of Homer. Peter Mackridge explores the political, social, and linguistic causes and effects of the controversy in its many manifestations. Drawing on a wide range of evidence from literature, language, history, and anthropology, he traces its effects on spoken and written varieties of Greek and shows its impact on those in use today. He describes the efforts of linguistic elites and the state to achieve language standardization and independence from languages such as Turkish, Albanian, Vlach, and Slavonic. This is a timely book. The sense of national and linguistic identity that has been inculcated into generations of Greeks since the start of the War of Independence in 1821 has, in the last 25 years, received blows from which it may not recover. Immigration from Eastern Europe and elsewhere has introduced new populations whose religions, languages, and cultures are transforming Greece into a country quite different from what it has been and to what it once aspired to be.
Greek: An Essential Grammar is a concise and user-friendly reference guide to modern Greek. It presents a fresh and accessible description of the language in short, readable sections. Explanations are clear and supported by examples throughout. This new edition has been revised and updated to present an accurate and accessible description of the most important aspects of modern Greek. Features include: clear and up-to-date examples special attention to those points which often cause problems to English-speaking learners Greek/English comparisons and contrasts highlighted throughout. Greek: An Essential Grammar is ideal for learners involved in independent study and for students in schools, colleges, universities and adult classes of all types. Levels CEFR scale A1-B2 and ACTFL level Low-Intermediate to Advanced.
A concise and user-friendly reference guide to the most important aspects of modern Greek, this book presents a fresh and accessible description of the language in short, readable sections. Explanations are clear and supported by examples.
After more than twenty years as a full member of the European Union, Greece has produced a literature with radically different thematic, ideological and linguistic orientations from previous periods, for both domestic and international reasons. Since literature is considered to constitute both the repository of culture and one of its several manifestations, any attempt to assess cultural convergence in a unified Europe necessitates an examination and evaluation of contemporary literary production in individual member states. The present volume - the collective work of academics, literary critics and fiction writers - investigates the dramatically new trends that have emerged in contemporary Greek fiction and places this local literature within an international context.
Greek: An Essential Grammar of the Modern Language is a concise and user-friendly reference guide to the most important aspects of modern Greek. It presents a fresh and accessible description of the language in short, readable sections. Explanations are clear and supported by examples throughout. The Grammar is ideal for learners of all levels and is suitable for those involved in independent study and for students in schools, colleges, universities and adult classes of all types. Features include: * lots of clear and up-to-date examples * clear explanations of grammatical terms * discussion of points which often cause problems * Greek/English comparisons and contrasts highlighted. Greek: An Essential Grammar of the Modern Language will help you read, speak and write with greater confidence.
After more than twenty years as a full member of the European Union, Greece has produced a literature with radically different thematic, ideological and linguistic orientations from previous periods, for both domestic and international reasons. Since literature is considered to constitute both the repository of culture and one of its several manifestations, any attempt to assess cultural convergence in a unified Europe necessitates an examination and evaluation of contemporary literary production in individual member states. The present volume - the collective work of academics, literary critics and fiction writers - investigates the dramatically new trends that have emerged in contemporary Greek fiction and places this local literature within an international context.
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