Cappadocian in the social media era

Until very recently, Cappadocian Greek seemed to have disappeared without a trace. Linguists and dialectologists even believed it had become extinct altogether. However, one Cappadocian variety, Mišótika, is still spoken in some villages and towns in the decentralized administrations of Macedonia and Thrace, Epirus and Western Macedonia, and Thessaly and Central Greece. The dialect is undergoing attrition under the growing pressure of Standard Modern Greek and its regional varieties and is actually being re-Hellenized. Even the oldest speakers make free use of Greek instead of Misiótika words and expressions and attrition is noticeable in at the phonological, morphological and syntactic levels. As a result, there are now many semi- or even would-be speakers whose speech is located somewhere on a continuum from Mišótika with Standard or Regional Modern Greek elements in it to Standard or Regional Modern Greek with Mišótika elements in it - in both cases mostly words and phrases. Over the past ten years, we have witnessed a growing interest in Mišótika as a marker of (Mišótika) Cappadocian identity. Speakers feel more confident to speak their language in public, for instance at the annual Gavoustima, where theatrical plays in Mišótika are now regularly performed by the syllogos of Néo Agionéri (to the amusement and also to bewilderment of the audience). Remarkably and very fortunately, Mišótika is now also used in the Social Media. I will concentrate here on Facebook, especially on the page called Έναρξη Διδασκαλίας Εκµάθησης Μυστιώτικου Ιδιώµατος ( group 470281169768316 on FB). The title is identical with the subtitle of Thomas Fates’ book Χ͜ιογός α ας χαρίσ̌’, which is some sort of “Teach Yourself Mišótika” and in which, interestingly, a special orthography for Mišótika has been developed. I will discuss the kind of information found on the FB page: questions, questionnaires, explanations of words and short phrases, folktales and other short stories, audio & video clips etc. Particular attention will be paid to the problems of using the Greek alphabet to write Mišótika in relation to the ongoing phonological attrition and also to the insecurity when it comes to interpretation linguistic phenomena in Mišótika

Southern Europe

This chapter reviews the prosodic systems and intonational phonology of a group of Southern European languages: Italian, French, Greek, and Maltese. It describes their stress, phrasing, rhythm, and intonational phonology, with particular attention to phonologically informed experimental work. In the case of Italian, given the lack of a spoken standard (which is only used by professional speakers) and the descriptions of quite a number of varieties (e.g. Bari, Florence, Naples, Palermo, Pisa, and Rome, inter alia), this review highlights common prosodic and phrasing features first, and subsequently covers any definable variety-specific intonational features. For French, the survey focuses on hexagonal French, while Athenian Greek is the representative variety for Greek, with some excursions into regional varieties. For Maltese, the chapter only focuses on its standard

From the "refledging" to the "illumination of the nation": aspects of political ideology in the Greek Church under Ottoman domination

Three major historical questions are briefly discussed in this study:a) How far may the anti-Westernism of the Greek Orthodox Church conduceto the cultural isolationism of the Orthodox world (at least the Greek sector); b) how far did the initiatives of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, as also ofits individual functionaries, be described as ecumenical, or at least panBalkan, at a political level; and c) how far, geographically and ethnologicallyspeaking, did the Great Church influence the processes of ethnogenesis in theOrthodox communities under its jurisdiction. The author arrives to thefollowing conclusions: a) Although chronic aversion to the Occident was afundamental aspect of the Church’s ideology, it did not engender thoroughgoing cultural isolationism in a considerable part of the Orthodox population,even in the early years of Ottoman rule, b) Politically the Oecumenical Patriarchate was the head of the Greeks (“ κεφαλή του Γένους των Ρωμαίων”).Yet its general religious and ecclesiastical policy remained firmly supranational and pan-Orthodox, at least until the end of the eighteenth century. c) The Great Church made no deliberate attempt either to accelerate or slow down the processes of ethnogenesis as regards the “Romaic” and even more the “non-Romaic” peoples under its jurisdiction. Hellénisation is traceable, but numerically and geographically was not widespread; and in any case was due to historical factors, in which the Church did not play an active, or at leastdecisive, role

A Quantitative Text Analysis of Lullaby Lyrics from Greek-speaking Regions

Τα παραδοσιακά δημοτικά τραγούδια είναι άμεσα συνδεδεμένα με τον πολιτισμό και την ιστορία κάθε λαού και λειτουργούν διαχρονικά ως ενοποιητικό στοιχείο μέσα στον χωροχρόνο. Είναι αλληλένδετα με τα έθιμα, τις τελετουργίες κάθε τόπου και επιβιώνουν μέσα από συλλογικές διαδικασίες περνώντας από γενιά σε γενιά. Οι στίχοι τους αντιπροσωπεύουν σημαντικό κομμάτι του προφορικού λόγου και αποτελούν ένα είδος λαϊκής ποίησης που εκφράζει συναισθήματα, κάνοντας ταυτόχρονα άμεσες αναφορές στην καθημερινή ζωή. Τα νανουρίσματα, κατεξοχήν γυναικεία τραγούδια, έχουν ως απώτερο σκοπό να καθησυχάσουν και να κοιμίσουν το βρέφος. Αποτελούν μέσο επικοινωνίας ανάμεσα στη μητέρα και το παιδί ενισχύοντας τον δεσμό μεταξύ τους. Σκοπός αυτής της έρευνας είναι να μελετήσει στίχους ελληνόφωνων νανουρισμάτων και να αναζητήσει ομοιότητες και διαφορές ανάλογα με τη γεωγραφική τους προέλευση. Υπάρχουν κοινά χαρακτηριστικά σε στίχους περιοχών με παρεμφερή γεωγραφική διαμόρφωση; Πόσο διαφέρουν τα χαρακτηριστικά αυτά από τόπο σε τόπο; Έχουμε συγκεντρώσει ένα σύνολο δεδομένων που περιέχει όλα τα νανουρίσματα που εξετάστηκαν σε αυτή τη μελέτη, μαζί με τη γεωγραφική τους προέλευση όπως αναφέρεται στις πηγές. Η συλλογή είναι διαθέσιμη στον ακόλουθο σύνδεσμο: https://github.com/paraskevik/Greek-Lullaby-Lyrics . Για να απαντήσουμε σε αυτά τα ερωτήματα, πειραματιστήκαμε με τέσσερις διαφορετικές κατηγοριοποιήσεις, προσπαθώντας να δημιουργήσουμε όσο το δυνατόν ευρύτερες γεωγραφικές ομάδες με κοινά χαρακτηριστικά. Χρησιμοποιήσαμε περιγραφική ανάλυση και υπολογίσαμε ποσοτικούς κειμενικούς δείκτες κατά την ανάλυση των στίχων. Παρά τους περιορισμούς που αντιμετωπίσαμε λόγω της υποαντιπροσώπευσης των νανουρισμάτων στις συλλογές ελληνικών δημοτικών τραγουδιών, τα αποτελέσματα της έρευνας μάς οδηγούν στο συμπέρασμα πως οι κειμενικοί δείκτες των στίχων επηρεάζονται από την γεωγραφική τους προέλευση.Traditional folk songs are closely associated with the culture and history of each country, uniting people across time and place. Handed down from generation to generation, they are linked to life-cycle rituals and communal participation. Their lyrics represent an important part of spoken language and form a type of folk poetry that expresses the emotions of ordinary people, making direct references to daily life. Numerous collections aim to preserve these songs by compiling their lyrics and occasionally their music. Lullabies, traditionally women’s songs, still part of everyday life, are performed not only to lull children but also to strengthen the unique bond between mother and child. The objective of this research is to study Greek lullaby texts from various regions and uncover linguistic similarities and differences, highlighting both unity and regional variation. Are there common characteristics between areas with similar geographical features? How do these characteristics differ from place to place? We have compiled a dataset containing all lullabies examined in this study, along with their geographical origin mentioned in the sources. The dataset is available at https://github.com/paraskevik/Greek-Lullaby-Lyrics . To explore the research questions, we experimented with four different categorizations aiming to form broader geographical groups with common features. We employed quantitative methods to conduct text analysis in lullaby lyrics. Despite the challenges we faced due to the underrepresentation of lullabies in Greek folk songs anthologies, the results of the research suggest a possible connection between textual characteristics and geographical origin

Cappadocian kinship

Cappadocian kinship systems are very interesting from a sociolinguistic and anthropological perspective because of the mixture of inherited Greek and borrowed Turkish kinship terms. Precisely because the number of Turkish kinship terms differs from one variety to another, it is necessary to talk about Cappadocian kinship systems in the plural rather than about the Cappadocian kinship system in the singular. Although reference will be made to other Cappadocian varieties, this paper will focus on the kinship systems of Mišotika and Aksenitika, the two Central Cappadocian dialects still spoken today in several communities in Greece. Particular attention will be given to the use of borrowed Turkish kinship terms, which sometimes seem to co-exist together with their inherited Greek counterparts, e.g. mána vs. néne ‘mother’, ailfó/aelfó vs. γardáš ‘brother’ etc. In the final part of the paper some kinship terms with obscure or hitherto unknown etymology will be discussed, e.g. káka ‘grandmother’, ižá ‘aunt’, lúva ‘uncle (father’s brother)’ etc

Society and the reason of language

A combination of circumstances occurring in western Europe and theBalkans and eastern Europe alike during the second half of the eighteenthcentury favored the eastward and southeastward diffusion of certain aspects ofEnlightenment thought. If there was a supply of new ideas in western Europe,however, what facilitated their southeastward diffusion was the existence,along the maritime fringes of the Ottoman Empire and in the Habsburgfrontiers adjacent to the Ottoman, of a growing demand for appropriate newideas. One important event in western Europe was the publication ofMontesquieu’s De l’esprit des lois (1748), which redefined Europe —partly interms of geography and climate but even more in terms of law, moderation,commerce, and the circulation of goods and ideas, so that Europe’s otherbecame Oriental despotism. Once admired as the “new Romans”, the OttomanEmpire became an object of criticism. Europe itself came to be understood asthe territories in which a demand for an unimpeded circulation of goods andideas existed or could be created. In other words, the extent of Europe couldbe said to coincide with territories in which there were elites with Enlightenment goals. At about the same time, in response to the growth of the commerce ofGreeks and Macedo-Vlachs with western Europe and Russia, of the growth ofthe commerce of Greeks and Serbs and of the church and educational reformsof Maria Theresa in the Habsburg Monarchy, of study by Greeks in Italianmedical schools and other faculties and of Serbs in German and Hungarianhigher schools, and of the rise in the Austrian territories of a Serb burgherclass, a growing number of Serbs and Greeks began to identify after 1770 withsome of the Enlightenment goals. By and large, the Greek and Serb exponentsof the new ideas did not seek a rupture with their own past but only with apast that they did not regard as their own. The acceptance of Enlightenmentideas thus was generally not an act of “de-Byzantinization”. On the otherhand, under the influence of German pietism, whose center was the Universityof Halle but which was also propagated by German merchants who went to theLeipzig fairs, it could take the form of attachment to such ideas as rationalpiety and enlightened virtue.By the 1780s, there was the beginning among Serb and Greek writers ofwhat, in another connection, Fernand Braudel has called a “verbal inflation”,and which I myself associate with what I call the Third Axial Age. Clearlyevident in the work of one of the most admired Serb authors, DositejObradović, that verbal inflation was the result of his quest for “clear, definite,and constant ideas”. To identify the art of communication, he borrowed aRussian term, slovesnost, whose purpose he understood as enlightening theunderstanding, pleasing the imagination, moving the passions, and influencingthe will, an activity that western Europeans commonly called rhetoric. Amongthe words that he borrowed from the western European languages or coinedby analogy were the terms for fashion (moda), capital (kapital), nation (nacija),and public sphere (opštestvó).Among Greek and Serb writers alike, there was, by the 1780s, a linguisticturn, a shift from a discourse of philosophy under which language was subsumed to a discourse of language under which philosophy was subsumed. Anexamination of the work of Condillac, Volney, Noah Webster, and JohannGeorg Hamann indicates that a similar turn began somewhat earlier inwestern Europe and at about the same time in the United States. One mayassociate this turn with certain writers but also with certain areas —with theIonian Islands, Epirus, Macedonia, and Thessaly among the Greeks and withKarlovac (Carlstadt) and other western regions among the Serbs, with areasdistant from centers of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, such as Constantinople andSremski Karlovci. The turn further reflected the simultaneous movement fromconceptions of “universality” to conceptions of nationality, both of which differ, however, from conceptions of locality. They were, therefore, also an affirmation by the new elites of their own identification with Europe and the idea of a culture of dialogue

Shrines in a Fluid Space: The Shaping of New Holy Sites in the Ionian Islands, the Peloponnese and Crete under Venetian Rule (14th-16th Centuries)

In Shrines in a Fluid Space, Argyri Dermitzaki offers a study of the cultic phenomena and sites visited by late medieval pilgrims in the Ionian Sea, the Peloponnese and Crete.; Readership: All interested in the cultic phenomena in Corfu, Strophades, the Peloponnese and Crete, in cultural exchanges in the Mediterranean and in late medieval Holy Land pilgrimage

Early Greek Alphabetic Writing

Despite the flourishing of epichoric studies on the Archaic Greek scripts in the 1960s, embodied by archaeologists Lilian Hamilton Jeffery and Margherita Guarducci, most scholarship on early alphabetic writing in Greece has focused on questions around the origin of ‘the Greek alphabet’ instead of acknowledging the diversity of alphabetic systems that emerged in Geometric and Archaic times. The present book proposes to bring back the epichoric approach by focusing on the different ways in which the earliest epigraphic evidence represents the spoken Greek dialects. However, instead of continuing the palaeographic methodology of previous studies, this analysis follows the latest trends in grapholinguistics, more specifically the methodology of comparative graphematics. By examining the grapheme-phoneme relationships across Greek-speaking regions, it is possible to recognize that diversity and to draw connections with neighboring contemporaneous alphabets, such as those for Phrygian, Eteocretan and Etruscan. This work, carried out within the Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) project, aims to contribute towards the conceptualization of the so-called epichoric scripts as independent alphabets, as well as their framing within the ecology of ancient Mediterranean writing systems. Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) is a project funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 677758), and based in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge

The geography of haunted places : landscape and imagined communities in the fiction of Papadiamantis.

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DX204983 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo