www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Turkish mountains where they still speak Ancient Greek

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8520668.stm

Return to Trebizond

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2010/04/100415_return_to_trezibond_pt_2.shtml

Just came across these while wondering over the BBC website and thought some may find these stories of interest. They may be other related stories I have missed on this site.

XB! BB!

The Pontics speak Greek, but ethnologically speaking, they are Anatolians more closely related to the Georgians and Armenians. The region became Greek-speaking in the 4th century BC when overrun by Alexander the Great. It was later incorporated into the Selucid successor state, and when that collapsed, became independent under the Mitradatid kings--again, closely related to the Armenians and the Bagratids of Georgia. The native Anatolian tongue was displaced by Greek during this period, and Greek remained the vernacular even after the Romans absorbed the whole area in the first century BC.

Because of its isolation, Trebizond became the seat of one of the Byzantine rump states after the Latin occupation of Constantinople. After the Paleologian restoration, it retained a semi-independent existence because of its geographical separation from the rest of the Byzantine Empire, and actually lasted beyond the fall of Constantinople, not surrendering to the Ottomans until 1461.

Byzantine Greek is not quite the same as Ancient Greek. "Ancient Greek" normally means some variety of pre-Christian Greek, while "Byzantine Greek" is more-or-less the Greek of the New Testament and the Holy Fathers, as it developed further during the period of the Eastern Empire.

Nevertheless this linguistic survival among the people who presently live in Pontus is of major importance and should be investigated thoroughly, although the Turkish government may not like the idea.

Fr. Serge

There were so many types of Greek used in the Byzantine Empire. The educated classes affected an antiquarian Attic style, though through Homer they also retained some facility in Ionian and even Doric; the Church had a liturgical and homilitic dialects, the people spoke many different dialects of Koine. Edward Luttwak says that the great difficulty in studying the Byzantines is their propensity for using many, if not all, of these variations of Greek in a single document (probably due to their fondness for florilegia) Taft speculates (in Liturgy as the Byzantines Saw It) that the common people probably did not grasp a lot of what was being preached from the pulpit--even if they appreciated the rhetorical style. I think he might underestimate them, just a tad. Jebbies are prone to do that.

I used to pass 'The Pan Pontian and Trebzond Association' premises quiet often when I lived in Melbourne. I was taken aback the first time I saw their sign as I walked past. It seems Ataturk has failed to wipe out these and other groups from what we now know as Turkey, when he deported them.

I had assumed that Greeks understood the Liturgy until one day this came up in conversation with a young man whose family were from Cyprus. He informed me that he understood very little of the Liturgy and yet he could hold a conversation with the parents and grandparents in Greek.

This makes the so-called "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia look like child's play.

The "exchange of populations" was mutual, accepted by all parties as the only way out of a bloodbath. And there is guilt enough to go around. The Greeks would still be in Turkey if the Greek government had not decided to take advantage of the chaos within the crumbling Ottoman Empire to implement the "dream" of Megalo Hellas. Having started the war, the Greeks came within a hair's breadth of winning it, but having bogged down in a war of attrition it could not win, refused to compromise on its war aims, and ended up losing everything it had gained.

The Turks, for their part, saw ethnic homogeneity as essential for the establishment of a modern nation-state on the ruins of the polyglot Ottoman Empire. The breakup of the old empires--Russian, Ottoman and Austo-Hungarian, led to similar acts of ethnic cleansing and population displacements, which did much to set the state for the Second World War--not to mention the current situation in the Middle East and Central Asia.

I've recommended it before, and I will again: everyone should read Niall Ferguson's history, The War of the World.

A few years ago a Greek politician visiting Australia's large Greek population in Melbourne was interviewed on radio and said that Greece has always had an identity problem and that was it did not know if it was Hellas or Romiosini (my spelling. He went on to say that a Greek state at the southern end of the Balkans was very much the creation of western romantics like Lord Byron.

I saw recently (wish I had kept the article) that when the Greek and Turkish states were created, accademics in both then had to set to and create National languages for both countries, which have been ongoing works in progress.

There was no need to create a national Greek language, of all the strange ideas. What did happen, however, was that the Greek scholarly (and pseudo-scholarly) establishment wanted to "purify" vernacular Greek from external influences, and concocted "katharevousa" ("pure speech") which they hoped would replace "demotiki" (Greek as popularly and normally spoken and written).

This quixotic enterprise, predictably, failed. Most people went on speaking demotiki - style Greek, and still do. When the military government of Papadopulos collapsed about thirty years ago, the democratic government which replaced the military government decided that enough was blooming enough and called a halt to the attempt to compel people to use katharevousa. There is still an Athens daily newspaper printed in katharevousa, and inevitably there are a few die-hards who insist on trying to maintain katharevousa, but it's a lost cause.

However, other varieties still survive: local dialects, specialized forms (Biblical Greek, Patristic Greek, liturgical Greek, classical Greek, and so forth), which one must learn if one wants to work with the relevant materials.

Not so very long ago, a friend was driving his parish priest and three of the older and more pious ladies home from Church. The ladies were chatting away about something or other and my friend was only half listening - until one of the older ladies quoted a psalm verse, absolutely "spot on" - she gave the quote itself perfectly, and applied it perfectly to the matter under discussion. My friend and the priest both gasped in shock. The ladies stopped for a moment, looked at the driver and the priest, grinned wickedly, and said: "you think we don't understand - don't you! The priest and the driver had to admit that they had thought the ladies could not understand liturgical/Biblical Greek. So the ladies smiled and said that they were sorry to disappoint the two men, but they really were not quite so stupid as the men had thought!

Fr. Serge

There is so much beautiful literature in katharevousa: Cavafy's poems for example!

Well, if you wish to learn katharevousa and read poetry or whatever else, I certainly won't stand in your way.

Fr. Serge