XXII MODERN GREEK ALTHOUGH no book of the first importance has appeared since the last of these reports was written two years ago, there is yet a good deal of interesting work to be noticed. The National Lexikon advances, the publication of early texts continues, and a number of books and pamphlets have appeared dealing with individual dialects or more general topics of Modern Greek philology. For full bibliographies the reader may as before be referred to Aaoypapia1 and the Byzantinische Zeitschrift; this report, however, mentions every publication of importance. The National Lexikon 2 has published an avakoivwσis Tρúτη, containing the material now collected for nine words, with blank pages for additions, to be circulated all over Greece. The continuation of this plan will produce a πρόχειρον λεξικόν, which will be the basis of the final work. On the γλωσσικὸν ζήτημα two pamphlets have been published by Dr Manoli Triandaphillidhis; an enthusiastic review of Thumb's Grammar, with an historical sketch of the grammars of Modern Greek from the time of Sophianós,3 and a paper on elementary education in Greece.* The writer records his impressions of a number of schools, in which of course the teaching is in the official 'purified' language, and vividly depicts the mental con 1 Λαογραφία, Δελτίον τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς Λαογραφικῆς Εταιρείας, Athens. 2 See Year's Work, 1909, 1911. 3 Ένα βιβλίο γιὰ τὴ γλῶσσα μας. Both reprinted from the Δελτίο τοῦ 4 Η παιδεία καὶ ἡ γλῶσσα μας. Εκπαιδευτικού Ομίλου, 2 (1912), Athens. fusion of the children caused by the use of what is almost an unknown tongue. It is a strong plea for the use of the popular language in education, and for humour compares with Ephtaliótis' amusing account of the new schoolmaster coming to the village and hellenising the old-fashioned names of his pupils.1 The second volume has now appeared of Philíndas' Grammar of the Romaic Language, of which the first was printed in 1907.2 The author is an extreme demoticist, and in his desire to sever all connection with the written tradition goes so far as to replace the traditional grammatical terms, which can never be out of place in any form of Greek, by new words of his own. This extravagance results in such novelties as ματατόπισμα for μετάθεσις, ξέμοιασμα for αφομοίωσις, συχώνεμα for κράσις, and the nasals appear no longer as ἔρρινα but as μυτόπνοα Apart from these eccentricities, the book is a treasury of what the demotic party would like the language to be. A very curious specimen of the vulgar spoken language is given by Mítros Katsíkis' Tales of an Evzone. The hero is the soldier Mítros himself, who tells the stories in a language which the dropping and alteration of the unaccented vowels marks as a North-Greek dialect. It contains, however, a large number of words from the written language, showing the success of the schools in forcing these words into the vernacular. It is sometimes remarked that it is very difficult to speak Greek without using such words, and in this book we have the actual language of a town-dweller, on the one hand a patois, and on the other filled with these words from book Greek. What the people occasionally does with such words is seen 1 Tà óvóμará μas, 'Eoría, 1890, and Thumb's Handbuch, 2nd ed., p. 256. 2 Μ. Φιλῆντας• Γραμματικὴ τῆς Ρωμαίϊκης Γλώσσας, τόμος δέφτερος, 'A0ĥva, 1910. Besides these volumes the same author published in 1902 8 μέρος Α', Φωνολογία καὶ γραφή, which, as far as I know, was never continued. • Ευζωνικὰ Διηγήματα, ὑπὸ Μήτρου Κατσίκη, Constantinople, 1913, appearing in penny parts. from our soldier's favourite dirag, twice, formed from drag, the word substituted by the schoolmasters for μιά φορά. Learned phrases and endings such as ἶπ' οὐδινὶ λόγου, τὰ γιγονότα, ἰρουτουμανῶς, ἐπειδή, δηθιν, and cosmopolitan Gallicisms like ασανσέρ (ascenseur) and ἀπρὲ μιντί (après midi) overlay the grammar and vocabulary of the unsophisticated speech of the 'Pauaιós, to form an extraordinary mixture, as far removed from the purified language which it has ruined itself by aping, as from the consciously artistic idiom of the modern demotic writers. It is an ignoble, but unfortunately a real language. 1 A new periodical which promises well is XρioτiavikŃ Kpýτn,1 its scope being the general history and affairs of the Christians in Crete. Of the articles already published, the most interesting are a historical poem in the Cretan dialect and a paper on the text of Digenís by the editor, Doctor Stephanos Xanthoudhídhis. The poem (pp. 379-434) by the contemporary Παῦλος Πρεσβύτερος describes the restoration and handing over to the Greeks of the Church of St Minás in Candia in 1735. It is now printed from the MS. in the Candia Museum without the usual correction of orthographical errors, and as a picture of contemporary writing is not without interest. The author, who says frankly, δὲν γράφομε γιαπηείτης· μόνον γιαδουλευτῆς σας, disarms criticism by the humility of his last few lines: -- Λιπὸν εἰαναγνόσαντες· τούτην τὴν εἰστορίαν, 2 The Digenís article contains emendations of the Escorial MS. published by Hesseling. The MS. is very corrupt, but is closer to the popular ballads than the other versions, and Xanthoudhídhis thinks that the writer was popularising 1 Published at Heraklion, ἐπιμελείᾳ τῆς ἐν Κρήτῃ Εκκλησίας. The first three parts of vol. i. have now appeared. 2 In Aaoypapía III., pp. 537-604, 1911, 1912, some more learned recension of the type preserved by the MSS. of Grottaferrata and Trebizond. Hesseling thought that the writer was a native of the Archipelago at the end of the fifteenth century; Xanthoudhídhis thinks that the dialect and the absence of rhyme put him earlier, although hardly earlier, than 1450, and that he came from Western Crete. Another monument of Cretan, published by Pernot, is the account of the Turkish siege of Malta in 1565 by ̓Αντώνιος ὁ ̓Αχέλης of Retimo, made from an Italian Ó original.1 For some reason Pernot prints with the Greek text not this Italian original, from which he admits that the Cretan author worked, but a French version. The language is a literary form of Cretan, using both learned and popular forms. Another early text is the fifteenth-century 'EpwrоTalyva, published by Hesseling and Pernot.2 The MS. contains a number of love poems, and these are followed in the edition by a collection of Ekaтoλóyia, for the most part modern and oral. These hundred-word songs' are a species of composition in which the girl makes her lover sing a verse for each number from 1 to 20, 30, 40, and so on up to 100. The verse for the number 8, for example, runs :— • Οκτὼ του λέει ἡ λιγερὴ, κι ὁ νιὸς ἀπολογᾶται· Owing to the tendency of the local dialects to disappear, books on them will probably be studied and valued when many more pretentious compilations are little more than 1 Le Siège de Malte par les Turcs en 1565, publié en Français et en Grec d'après les éditions de 1567 et de 1571, avec 20 reproductions, par Hubert Pernot. Paris, 1910. Pp. xvi, 198. 2 Bibliothèque Grecque Vulgaire, Tome X.; 'Epwrowalyvia (Chansons d'amour), publiées d'après un Manuscrit du XVe siècle avec une traduction, une étude critique sur les èkatoλóyia (chansons des cents mots), des observations grammaticales et un index, par D. C. Hesseling et Hubert Pernot. Paris et Athènes, 1913. Pp. xxxv, 187. waste paper. The present list ranges over all Greek dialects from Pontos to Italy. Βασιλείου Ι. Φάβη, Δ. Φ., Γλωσσικαὶ ἐπισκέψεις ἀναφερόμεναι εἰς τὸ ἰδίωμα Αὐλωναρίου καὶ Κωνιστρῶν. Ἐν ̓Αθήναις, 1911. Pp. 94. The Athenian Γλωσσική Εταιρεία offers prizes for treatises on local dialects, and a first prize has been awarded to this little book. The glossaries are used as material for the National Lexikon, but it is a pity that the grammars and texts so collected are not more often published. The short notes recently published by Khatzidhákis1 are most tantalising: he gives a few points from essays on the dialects of Aravan in Cappadocia, Pontos, Mani, Karystos, Megara, and Syme, all very imperfectly known from printed sources. The present example by the author of a paper on the dialect of Skyros2 treats of the dialect of places which are not far from Kyme, and, to judge from Alexandrís's book, closely resembled it in dialect. They belong to the group formed by the old dialect of Athens and the dialects of Megara, Aigina, Mani, and probably the Ionian Islands, all marked by the preservation of a and éa instead of tá, aorists active in -ka instead of -σa, and a tendency to pronounce v as ov. In this dialect also the so-called resolved forms of the contracted verbs are at their fullest development, the endings being -άω, -άεις, -άει, -άομε οι άμε, -άετε οι -ατε, -άovve or -âve. Of these, άes is very unusual, the sing. endings being usually, as in the Peloponnese, -áw, -ậs, -áei, and according to Khatzidhákis the pl. forms in -άoue, etc., instead of -âue are confined to Avlonári. The grammar is much fuller and better than that of Alexandrís, who, however, gives some songs and a glossary, both of which are' here missing. A revised edition has been published by the writer's 1 Ἔκθεσις διαγωνισμοῦ τῆς ἐν ̓Αθήναις γλωσσικῆς Εταιρείας, Athens, 1912. 2 Τεσσαρακονταετηρὶς τῆς καθηγεσίας Κ. Ε. Κόντου, Athens, 1909. 8 Δοκίμιον περὶ τοῦ γλωσσικοῦ ἰδιώματος τῆς Κύμης καὶ τῶν περιχώρων ὑπὸ Αποστ. Κ. ̓Αλεξανδρή, Athens, 1894. Pp. 48. |