[MGSA-L] Poniak Greek

[George Baloglou]

On Sun, 28 Jul 2002 JUNESAM at aol.com wrote:

> I have no knowledge of Pontic Greek - though I remember
> my late husband saying that his father's eldest brother
> (born in Trebizond c. 1890) spoke the most grammatically
> precise and correct Greek had ever heard. (He probably
> sounded even MORE precise & correct when living in
> rural Thessaly, where word endings seem in short supply !)

Trebizond, c. 1890? Sounds like my maternal grandmother: your uncle-in-law
was probably educated in a nice, 'urban' school in Trebizond; he could
certainly converse in Pontic Greek, but he didn't have to do that in
Thessaly :-)

> However it occcurs to me that there is one factor that might
> need to be considered when trying to assess the differences
> between Pontic Greek and the language now spoken in Greece
> - that the promotion of Katharevousa, and the persistence of local
> Demotiki in "Old Greece" might have just as much affected the
> language since 1820 (but in different directions) as the isolation of
> Pontic Greeks in a sea of Turkish for a further 100 years or more -
> not that one is more right or wrong, just divergent because of the
> very different circumstances and developments.

Katharevousa was also being promoted in the Greek schools of the Anatolian
urban centers -- see above. The difference you are alluding to is simply
due to Pontic's relative isolation, I think.

> So my questions would be :
>
> 1] How different was the Greek spoken c.1800 in Trebizond
>     from that in (say) Thessaly at the time?

Quite different, more or less to the point of mutual unintelligibility.

> I presume the discussions and correspondence of members
> of the Philiki Hetairia in the Crimea, in Constantinople and
> elsewhere WAS mutually understandable (though conceding
> that this might only reflect the usages of a more literate and
> educated class than the mass of people at the time )

Exactly -- members of that class certainly knew the Greek koine of the time,
if not some classical Greek (and certainly Bible Greek) as well.

> How variable were the regional dialects and usages in Greece
> and Asia Minor before the War of Independence ?

Due to continuing immigration from/to the mainland and the Aegean islands,
Western Asia Minor does not present major 'surprises'. Pontus was another
story, and if you are looking for more drama you should look at the various
Cappadocian and other inland dialects (one of which (Sille) I have also
heard at home). ["Babylon(ia)" the 183X (?) play dealing with the problems
arising out of the mutual (near) unintelligibility of the various Greek
dialects, also included a Cappadocian Greek; and about a century later,
old Cappadocians resettled in Greece were calling their interviewers at the
Historical Lexicon of Greek at night to report on additional words they had
forgotten to report, knowing all too well that their dialects, unlike Pontic
Greek, would not survive -- an act of ultimate patriotism, I would say!]

> Did the vocabulary and grammar of Makryiannis differ much
> from the language spoken in Asia Minor in 1820 ?

Western Asia Minor no, rest of Anatolia yes.

> And as a follow up -
>
> 2] How different was THAT from the Greek spoken by Pontiac
> refugees in Greece in 1920,or in S.Russia, or Greece in 2002 ?

Quite different, as suggested above; see also end of this message :-)

> Trying to clarify how far the linguistic differences are caused by
> these different social, political,educational & geographic
> developments, rather than assuming that "Pontic Greek" is some
> debased peasant survival brought in by refugees from Turkey.

Pontic is a rather sophisticated (and archaic) form of Greek. To offer a
funny, as well as dramatic, example, some Thessalonicans of Pontic descent
were misunderstood by their Pontic-speaking Turkish hosts in Pontus when
they told them that they were ready to leave: "feugw" retains its ancient
meaning ("flee") in Pontus, while in the Pontic Greek spoken in Greece that
meaning gradually gave way to the 'Greek koine' meaning ("depart")! :-)
[More on the Muslim/Turkish speakers of Pontic Greek in northeasternmost
Turkey in http://www.oswego.edu/~baloglou/anatolia/pontos.html .]

								G. B.