[MGSA-L] Princeton Hellenic Studies Lecture: October 19, 2016

[Dimitri H. Gondicas]

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies



Lecture



Cappadocian Greek

in the Social Media Era

Mark Janse
Ghent University


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 Greek 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 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. Remarkably and very fortunately, Mišótika is now also used in the Social Media. I will concentrate here on Facebook, especially on the FB page called Έναρξη Διδασκαλίας Εκμάθησης Μυστιώτικου Ιδιώματος (FB group 470281169768316). 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 and 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 interpretating linguistic phenomena in Mišótika.

Mark Janse Mark Janse is BOF-ZAP Research Professor in Ancient and Asia Minor Greek at Ghent University, a former visiting fellow of All Souls College (University of Oxford), Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies, and Onassis Visiting Scholar at Princeton University. His research spans the entire history of the Greek language, from Homer to the Modern Greek dialects of Asia Minor. He is well-known for his research on Cappadocian Greek on which he has published extensively, including a grammar. His personal involvement with its speakers has earned him the honorary title ‘Ambassador of the Cappadocians’ and is the topic of a documentary film ‘Last Words’ (serious Film, 2014).

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

6:00 p.m.

Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103

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