Talk:Modern Greek

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[edit] *sigh*

man, i swear, people just can't take the truth sometimes...

some Anonymous Coward reverted the edits on the mix of the language with turkish and slavic. i'm gonna revert them back. *sigh* Project2501a 19:40, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

«Μπογιάτισα το ντουβάρι και το ταβάνι με μπογιά». Count the greek words in this phrase. LOL Etz Haim 18:58, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Four. I don't speak Modern Greek (I studied some Ancient Greek when I was doing Indo-European), but given boya Turkish 'paint', duvar Turkish 'door', tavan Turkish 'ceiling' I would guess that this sentence means "Paint the door and the ceiling with paint". Some people don't understand that all languages borrow words from other languages, and, indeed, that doing so is a sign of strength and vitality. Evertype 20:00, 2005 Jan 4 (UTC)
Correct, congratulations! In modern "demotic" greek, which has had many influences from "katarevousa", you can say the same thing with 100% Greek words: «Έβαψα τον τοίχο και την οροφή με βαφή». However, people tend to use words from both Greek and non-Greek origin indiscriminatively in their conversations, so you may encounter combinations of the above. Etz Haim 23:54, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Just a reminder! "Duvar" does not mean "door" in Turkish, it means "wall". I know cause I'm a native speaker. Thelorien 17:14, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


Sorry my friend, but gathering all the word loans you can find and putting them to a phrase to prove the influence of a language upon the other is a bit dubious and not so sincere. The phrase you have created would hardly possibly come out of the mouth of a speaker of greek, as it sounds too "vulgar" and unnatural to be true! Being a greek speaker i have to say that though those words exist in greek their use is not as common as the equivalent greek ones as "τοίχος" "έβαψα" etc. That phrase seems totally unnatural to my ears! NOt to mention that those words you refer to are not used in all parts of greece. Loan words are very often, and greek has turkish words, especially in places like my birthplace were the turkish population before 1913 was of the same number as the greek.

I must disagree about the word "ταβάνι" and "μπογιά". Both are considered way more common than the equivalent Greek ones, "οροφή" and "βαφή". Therefore, I must denote that the phrase "Έβαψα τον τοίχο και την οροφή με βαφή" sounds as unnatural as "Μπογιάτισα το ντουβάρι και το ταβάνι με μπογιά"! I believe that most Greek speakers would use a mix of both phrases; for instance, the following phrase sounds a lot more natural to me: "Έβαψα τον τοίχο και το ταβάνι με μπογιά". --dionyziz 10:09, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] OK, this article needs some heavy editing.

It's small and there's a bunch of conflicting versions of it to the point, imnsho, that ti can't be saved. i propose we, the greek wikipedians, either work on it and improve it, or just scrap it and include a "modern greek" section in the Greek language article.

now, how do i put that to a vote? Project2501a 22:58, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I would suggest writing it up in the main article. If it gets really long it could be made into a new article of its own in due course. I do suggest giving concrete examples of borrowings of loanwords. Atkinson pointed out that the interrogative particle mi is a Turkish borrowing for instance. Evertype 20:00, 2005 Jan 4 (UTC)
Unfortunately the main Greek language article is now getting a bit long. I think it would be better ideally to improve this Modertn Greek article, and maybe move here some of the main article (for instance the lists of phrases). I'd also really like to see some more linguistic stuff on the Demotic/Katharevousa question, not just the history and politics, but how one can tell the one from the other. rossb 07:29, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

yeah, true, i should improve this article. just been busy irl lately. i'll eventually get around to it. hmm. now, where can i find a greek linguist... Project2501a 08:24, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)


[edit] I think you should all to stop judging something you're not familiar with.

I made some additions and editing on this article. In my opinion what was said in the older article was not false, but it was badly written and sounded biased. However Modern Greek DID assimilate foreign vocabulary such as Turkish, Italian and French, but a great part of it DID get wiped out by kathareuousa, so in a way Modern Greek of today is purer than the Demotike of the Ottoman Era. And due all the respect Project2501a but you're obviously not an expert yourself. Pointing that modern Greek has significant loan words from SLAVIC languages is pretty ignorant. Loan words came primary from the Latin, Romance and Turkish languages, and much less if at all from Slavic (except maybe some gardening tools). I'm from France but my origin is Greek (from Constantinoupolis), I can speak the language and I have also done studies on it. Even when I had no prior knowledge of Ancient Greek, I could read texts of the New Testament that were written in the 3rd century BC and understand them almost perfectly. I've come across medieval Byzantine literature texts of the 11th century AD (in Demotike) and the language is almost similar to today's. So Modern Greek DOES steam directly from Hellenistic Koine, which in turn is another dialect of ancient Greek that steams from Attic. During the Ottoman period the people's language didn't really evolve, which means that instead of creating new words for every new concept or object that was invented, those words were borrowed from foreign languages - hence the late stage of Demotike. In specific circles however (such as the Phanariots and the Eastern Orthodox Church), the language DID evolve and gave birth to Kathareuousa. The some 150-year co-existence of Kathareuousa and Demotike gives birth to Modern Greek, which is also referred as Demotike - because that's what it is.

As I speak French, English and Greek, I think I'm in better position to tell the degree of foreign influences those languages have

Ah. Argument from authority.

had. Yet in an article on the Modern French or the Modern English language, no-body would stress that they have had enormous influences from other languages and assimilated massive foreign vocabulary, but in an article on Modern Greek (which is 10 times closer to Mycenaean Greek than what modern English to medieval Anglo-Saxonic), for some reason everyone will try to point out and stress how it has had assimilated some foreign vocabulary (without being able to verify it themselves of course). And why is that? Because Modern Greek is part of the infamous language family called GREEK, whose dialects were spoken by Socrates and Plato and its influence is found in almost every language of the planet, therefore it MUST be judged stricter. Is that an "unbiased" and "neutral" perspective to you? Because if it is, then maybe we should seek for a common definition of those terms. I think all the pseudo-linguists (most of which don't speak the languages they judge) should make up their minds on what we can define as "foreign influence" on a language. Does the use of foreign vocabulary count as an influence that has to be stressed? Does a foreign influence become part of the language (and therefore doesn't have to be mentioned at all) after a certain period of time? If yes, then how long is that time period? Until those questions are answered, the majority of the articles on the Greek language (in comparison to the articles on the rest modern languages) can be considered officially BIASED. And eventhough most of you are Greek-speakers as well, I don't think that anyone has the ability nor knowledge to prove me wrong. Finally, I also think that this section should be part of the Greek language article. Another anonymous coward.

You are more than welcome to make any changes in the article you see fit. And no, I am not a linguist; I am a computer scientist. If you read the history of the talk page, you'll see that i was asking for the concatentation of this and the Greek language article but other people disagreed. On my part, I made the point to emphasize that modern Greek does not directly descent from ancient greek, mostly to counteract official Greek propaganda. About Anonymous Cowards: as the article on the matter mentions, it's my way to brand people that like to do one-time drive-by's: They come in here, they fire their fireworks off, much like any greek politician would do, and leave, never to come back. they only state their opinion, and that they are an expert on the matter and that we are all wrong, and greece is the best country in the world, and if we don't like it, we should turn in our passports and leave the country, "ELLAS, OLE OLE OLE", nationalistic frenzy at its best...
Wikipedia, and me as a humble reciepient of Jimbo's WikiHoneys, *YES MASTER! WILL DO MASTER* ;) encourages changes to all articles. I'll conclude this reply with a quote from Linus Torvalds: "Show me the code or get our of my way".

Project2501a 12:48, 2 May 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Macedonian Empire?

I'm puzzled by the reference to a "Macedonian empire" and to Koine as its vernacular language. Alexander the Great's empire broke up after his death and was followed by the confused period of the Diadochi and then the longer-term replacement by the Ptolemaic, Seleucid and Antigonid dynasties in their respective realms. Are you referrning to these collectively as the "Macedonian empire"? — clearly they were not a single entity. And moreover although Koine Greek may have been a language of administration and to some degree literature over all this area, it was certainly not the vernacular — there will have been many vernaculars, Persian, Egyptian, various languages of Anatolia ... Could we perhaps rephrase it as "the vernacular of Greece and the Greek diaspora in the Hellenistic and Roman periods? rossb 08:44, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The thing is that what was later known as Hellenistic Koine, had started taking shape long before the Diadochoi, within Alexander's armies and during their conquests. For that reason Koine is also known as the "Alexandrian dialect". What I'm not sure of is whether to label it as the "official" or the "vernacular" language of the Empire and the Hellenistic World. In a way it was partly both, as in the official language of some regions (e.g. Indo-Greek Kingdoms and Egypt) and the vernacular of others (e.g. Asia Minor). I think Hellenistic Koine deserves an article of its own to clarify this. Miskin

In either case, I would suggest that the phrase "Macedonian Empire" is anappropriate. rossb 14:14, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)


As a note to later edits:

   * development of the voiceless aspirated stop consonants — theta, phi and chi — to voiceless fricatives

   * development of the voiced stop consonants — delta, beta and gamma — to voiced fricatives

   * simplification of the system of vowels and diphthongs.

Those are not changes from ancient and modern Greek, there more like differences between Attic and other ancient Greek dialects. What I'm saying is that those accents pre-existed in ancient Greek dialects, but they only came to light through their absorption into Koine. Don't fall into the common trap to think that Attic is the official Greek language of Antiquity. Today it might be the default for "Classic Greek" classes, but back then it nothing more than a mere Greek dialect. I don't think those points are worth mentioned in that context because they don't characterise modern Greek in particular, as they're changes that took place in ancient times. This is why I think that a better article about Hellenistic Koine is needed, as it's the fusion of many ancient Greek dialects and the most important stage in the history of the Greek language (I might take care of it myself). Miskin

I don't think this is correct. I think the particular sound changes mentioned above happened after the koine had largely superseded the ancient dialects. The differences between the ancient dialects had to do with for instance the use of double sigma compared to double tau, and the prevalence of eta versus long alpha (Ionic preferring eta, Attic eta or alpha depending on context, and other dialects alpha) and the presence or otherwise of an /h/ sound. Surely the noteworthy changes are those between Ancient Greek (including Koine) and Modern Greek, and are very relevant in an article on Modern Greek, given that many readers may have some smattering of Ancient Greek (classical, New Testament, or otherwise) and be interested to know how Modern Greek differs; similarly those with a knowledge of Modern Greek would be interested to see how it had changed from ancient times. rossb 14:14, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)


In either case, I would suggest that the phrase "Macedonian Empire" is anappropriate. rossb 14:14, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't understant why. Isn't that what it's called? Miskin

No, it's not what it's called. More specifically there was no such thing. I was puzzled when I first encountered the phrase in this article, and thought "I don't ever remember it being called that" but of course there never was a Macedonian Empire as such, except possibly for a few years under Alexander. It very soon broke up into three separate parts, and the Greek-speaking world was not united under one rule again until the Roman period. rossb 19:26, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)


On my part, I made the point to emphasize that modern Greek does not directly descent from ancient greek, mostly to counteract official Greek propaganda.

Το πολύ το τάκα-τάκα κάνει το παιδί μαλάκα. If you're a "computer scientist" then maybe it's best to occupy yourself with programming languages instead of spoken ones.

And if you're a wikipedian, dwse ipografi. Like this: --~~~~. Re paides, mi rixnete prosvoles kai prokliseis, apla dwste ton kalitero sas eauto. --www.doc 03:43, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tsakonian vs. "Tsakonic"

I changed "Tsakonic" to "Tsakonian" because nobody says "Tsakonic" in English. I don't want to start a massive edit war, but you have to realize how bad it sounds in English - and that it conflicts with Wikipedia guidelines. I *know* that Τσακωνικά or Τσακωνική διάλεκτος is the correct form in Greek, but this is English. Like it or not, "Greece" is the standard name for Hellas (or Ellas, or Ellada) in English - the latter name being used mainly by poets - and the word "Tsakonic" doesn't exist at all. If you want to make "Tsakonic" productive in English, you're going to have to get published and wait for it to filter into tertiary sources like Wikipedia. Until then, we have to observe Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms. --Jpbrenna 18:54, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Greek language article series

Could people interested in this article please have a look at a discussion I instigated at Talk:Greek language, regarding a proposed restructuring of the whole series of Greek-related language articles. Thanks! Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:27, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ελληνική vs.Ελληνικά

Article names in Wikipedia are usually nouns. So, we would say: "Greek is a beautiful language", where "Greek" is a noun. The correct translation of this is "τα Ελληνικά" or η "el:Ελληνική γλώσσα". The second form is the more formal one and is also the one used in the Greek Wikipedia. Similarly for the dialects such as

[edit] Ρρ = flap or trill

At Modern Greek#Consonants, it says that the letter Ρρ is generally pronounced a trill, and is pronounced a flap in an intervocalic position. Are you sure, because I don't think a trill ever occurs in Greek. --Tzekai 11:44, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] synthetic passive

Re. the recent additions about other languages with synthetic passives: The Irish category in question is not a "passive" in the true sense but an "impersonal" form; I don't know if it is etymologically related to an old passive or not (it might). The north Germanic synthetic passives are a recent innovation, as far as I know, so it wouldn't be correct to say that these languages "preserve" that category. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:39, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] words at bottom

the tonos in the transliterations of kallimera and kallispera are on the second from the end when the greek has 3rd from the end.

[edit] Yevanic

I've never seen this one being listed as a Greek dialect. The way I see it, its relation to modern Greek is same as that of Yiddish to German. Miskin 22:18, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Also I think the "Examples" sections looks silly and outdated. I suggest to remove it. Miskin 23:46, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be an awful lot of information available on Yevanic, is there? The website quoted at Yevanic, [1], which seems pretty well researched, suggests that modern Yevanic was in fact quite close to the neighbouring Christian Greek vernaculars, with systemic differences "limited to phonetic, intonational, and lexical phenomena" and "no awareness of language separateness".
You are absolutely right about the "examples" phrase list. The only reason I didn't cut it down long ago was that somebody had actually gone to the trouble of making a sound recording of it - which means we either leave it exactly as it was, to fit the recording, or replace it completely. Fut.Perf. ☼ 00:12, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I changed "loanwords from Turkish" to "Ottoman Turkish", since historically these loanwords were added to Greek during the Ottoman era, so it seemed historically more accurate; plus, some are ultimately of persian or arab origin, adding to their Ottoman Turkish sense (I wonder if some became defunct in Turkish after the Kemal reforms ? ). Can someone link the word directly to the Ottoman Turkish language page, so that it takes you directly there and not to the disambiguation page? Thanks !

[edit] GA/FA?

Has anyone considered bringing this interesting article up to GA or FA standard? It would probably need a bit of copyediting & a lot more inline citations—but in general it strikes me that it has the makings of a first-class reference article.

The section on Geographic distribution would benefit from a table giving some idea of the relative sizes of the Greek-speaking populations in that long list of countries.

Phonology Some explanation of the IPA diacritics in [e̞] and [o̞] would be useful. As far as I can see, these diacritics don't appear in what is presumably a more specialized article, Modern Greek phonology.

I agree that the phrasebook examples at the end of the article should go. Perhaps they could be relegated to a separate article (Modern Greek phrases??). --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 11:49, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


Hah, thanks for your suggestions. Good points. This article has been on my (forever growing) to-do list for ageeeeeees. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:51, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
A few more comments, not necessarily in order of importance:
One rather glaring omission from the article is a History section. Actually, most of the material is there in existing sections; but some restructuring is necessary.
References in Greek I'm not sure what the MOS has to say about this, but since this is the English WP a translation of the titles mentioned in the footnotes would be useful. Besides, it would give you an opportunity to use that splendid word, a philippic, as used in a famous song by Simon & Garfunkel. (That may be one of the longest links on Wikipedia.)
Writing system The word belletristic is a bit, well, belletristic, don't you think? Literary would do, IMO.
Grammar That 3rd sentence is a bit overwhelming (of course I realize that it's merely summarizing the main article). Couldn't it be broken down a bit? As it stands, it's neither one thing nor the other—a sort of prose-list.
A lot of the Orthography section is in fact phonology. What's more, I feel it goes into too much detail—detail that is available, for those who want it, in the other main articles referred to. I'm not convinced of the need for separate Orthography and Writing system sections: in any case, much of the latter deals with orthography.
I hope these comments are of some use. I wouldn't have made them if I didn't think this was a good article. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 17:28, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, makes a lot of sense. Actually, to understand why this article is the way it is, you need to know its history. We once had an article simply titled Greek, which did both a diachronic survey of the whole of Greek language history and a synchronic sketch of Modern Greek, plus a smallish article on Modern Greek that dealt only with dialects and the katharevousa-demotic distinction and stuff like that. Then we restructured it, but it's still a bit rough at the edges. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:28, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
I suspect that many articles on WP have a similarly chequered history! I've just been involved in a major rewrite of the Chinese romanization system Gwoyeu Romatzyh: I think that by the time we'd finished scarcely a word of the original article was still there. This article is certainly in better shape, even if there are a few rough edges. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 22:00, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Common words and phrases

Turkish language had exactly the same sort of list, which they have moved to List of Turkish phrases, replacing it with a poem as an example. Why not do the same for Greek? It would be nice to include a Cavafy poem as an example. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 12:14, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ridiculous claims

Moreover, in bad English:

(Geographical distribution) During the last years, Modern Greek has become the language of all high educated people of Balkans[citation needed] and the regional lingua franca that all immigrants from Balkan countries have transmitted back to their countries and all significant universities have introduced in their schedule. Another factor of this language distribution is the financial control of Balkans by Greek companies[citation needed] that prefer employees speaking Modern Greek. 216.254.71.25

In the Balkans, as anywhere in Europe, there is no lingua franca (that is, between peoples with mutually incomprehensible mother tongues) but English. This will be even more so in the future. Greek is an isolated language - one can hardly imagine how a "highly educated" Bulgarian would converse in modern Greek with a Serb or a Croat, as their own languages are mutually comprehensible, not to speak of Bulgarian and Macedonian, historically the same language. Even more exotic would be to imagine a Turk conversing in Greek with an Albanian. All highly educated Balkan people (with the possible exception of Francophone Romanians and Italophone Albanians) would converse in English if they had no other common language.

The Greek colleagues should bear in mind that today, Greek is spoken - and the Greek alphabet is used - by (let's take the claims in the article at face value) 14-17 million people, while Slavic languages are spoken by more than 300 million, and the "Bulgarian" alphabet* (the Cyrillic alphabet originated most likely in present-day north-eastern Bulgaria) - by 280 million. Russian is a de facto regional lingua franca in much of eastern (and parts of central) Europe, the Transcaucasus and central Asia, forming a circle that Greese is no part of. Turkish is also a regional lingua franca between persons of Turkish/Turkic background and "Turkish" Roma in the Balkans, the Black Sea region and the Caucasus.

  • True, Cyrillic is mostly a modified Greek alphabet with added characters, but then Greek is a modified Phoenician too.

(User talk:216.254.71.25) 16:04, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Feel free to remove that passage. It was recently added by an anonymous contributor with no explanation and no supporting sources. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:44, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you; removing in a second. 216.254.71.25 (talk) 18:32, 10 June 2008 (UTC)