Katharevousa

Constructed language

• Katharevousa

Today as Katharevousa [ kaθarevusa ] ( Καθαρεύουσα, The Pure [ language ] ') designated form of Greek was in the 19th century, initially on the basis of the Greek vernacular ( Dimotiki ), later developed more like the ideal of the classical Attic, than you need a modern state - formation and language noted and the spoken vernacular is not considered for the purposes of the newly established Greek State adequate.

The one katharevousa never existed; Rather, during the Greek language dispute a variety of different degrees antikisierenden gradations of Katharevousa (as well Dimotiki ) were supported by different writers.

Development

The initiator of the Katharevousa was the writer Adamantios Korai (1748-1833), who first advocated a revised form of the modern Greek vernacular. The basic idea was to clean the spoken Greek of foreign influences (eg from Turkish ) and replace very popular expressions by more upscale. For the popular word for fish, ψάρι psari suggested Korais the late antique form ὀψάριον opsarion and not about the ancient Greek ἰχθύς ichthys ago. Only later even more radical forms of speech were increasingly promoted, reaching to the pure Atticism.

With the founding of the state, the Katharevousa was established as authoritarian state and antique-style language that had not much more in common with the approach taken originally from Korais ideal of a subjectively embellished vernacular and was spoken by any man as their mother tongue. Although she was still always referred to as Modern Greek, but had in most cases a rather ancient Greek appearance, however, is equated with the Greek language not because they also contained forms and words that has never existed in Ancient Greek.

The Katharevousa was until 1976 an official language of the state. Since then, the naturally formed and by Greeks as a native language Modern Greek spoken ( as Dimotiki, later taking into account recent katharevousa influences on the spoken language correctly as a standard Modern Greek νεοελληνική κοινή called ) sole official language of Greece and the official language of Cyprus and the European Union. In 1982 the official abolition of the polytonic orthography.

The katharevousa continues to play a role in some fields such as law, medicine and the church; also many proverbs and sayings of everyday life come from the Katharevousa. Many words and grammatical phenomena of Katharevousa have entered into modern Greek and are no longer perceived as old-fashioned or taught today. The newspaper Estia appears as the last newspaper in Katharevousa and has been with the friends of the high-level language, a solid readership.