Preface
Transliteration from Greek and pronunciation of Greek Words
Maps and illustrations
Acknowledgements
1: Theoretical background
2: The preconditions for the Greek language controversy
3: The early stages of the controversy, 1766-1804
4: Adamantios Korais as language reformer
5: Alternative proposals to Korais' project, 1804-1830
6: Language in the two Greek states, 1830-1880
7: The beginning of the demoticist campaign, 1880-1897
8: Educational demoticism and political reform, 1897-1922
9: The political polarization of the language question,
1922-1976
10: Epilogue
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
Peter Mackridge is Emeritus Professor of Modern Greek at Oxford
where he taught Greek language, literature, and culture from 1981,
and Visiting Professor of Modern Greek at King's College London. He
is the author of The Modern Greek Language (OUP 1985), and
co-author of Greek: a Comprehensive Grammar of the Modern Language
(Routledge 1997)) and Greek: an Essential Grammar of the Modern
Language (Routledge 2004) all of which have been
published in Greek.
This book provides the first authoritative, nuanced, and analytical account of the notorious language question in modern Greece. Drawing copiously on original sources that have often been overlooked, even by specialists, Mackridge coherently and convincingly explains why the "correct" form of their national language mattered so much to Greek-speakers for more than two centuries. In doing so he also argues powerfully for the role of language to be better studied as part of the global phenomenon of nation-formation. Roderick Beaton Modern Greek, a more extraordinary language even than English, reaches back to Homer, Sophocles, Plato, and Sappho. For Greeks, the demotic language of today is part of a three-thousand-year continuum that buoys their sense of pride and identity. "What a joy it is to fashion our language!" says Kazantzakis. Peter Mackridge's incisive examination shows why. Peter Bien
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