Greek Language Policy

 

Officially there is no language policy for Greek but historically it has seen its development in to the Greek society .The debate revolved around the revival of ancient Greek language as a symbol of Greek consciousness and glorious past during the Greek revolution of 1821. There were two camps divide on the question of language at the establishment of modern Greece, one group was of the idea that Archaic Greek language must be purified from the impurity’s Turkish mixture into the Greek language, these ideas were being propagated by the traditionalists. On the other hand, the Liberals were advocating the popularly used language at the time as means for mass education, spiritual cultivation, and national uprising.

Despite all the debate on language, the scholars and literary circles used the archaic form of Greek language for official documentation was endorsed during the formation of Greek state. One thing that seems to be clear that scholars and intelligentsia were key players in deciding the language policy not the federal state, policy aimed at creating and legitimizing the purified form. The form was known as Katharevousa form. Katharo means clean and it was adopted as an official language of modern Greek state, acquired a high value as a continuation of Ancient Greek. Modern Greek language required expansion of its variety in vocabulary which was achieved via internal and external borrowing from existing Greek varieties and from other European languages such as French and English.

Up until the end of World War 1, major Greek cities experienced a rapid expansion of its population and consolidation of the middle class. The young journalists and writers brought new themes into the literature depicting social life of Greeks, the praise of countryside and critique of city life, division of labor and occupation with childhood education provide a new content to the social and political life of Greek. The intelligentsia started demanding recognition of commonly used language for the official and educational purposes in order to enhance the literacy in Greek society. The main reason for slow progress was associated with different language used in Schools and in official matters of the state which majority of the people were unfamiliar with. This debate on language became eminent and it was after 1976 that demoticist movement achieved its success and popular language became an official language.

There is no official language policy in Greece. The Greek is the official language of the state of Greece, and it is taught in schools from primary, secondary and at tertiary level. However, there is the exception to this notion when it comes to international schools whether they are American or German, these schools prefer their own languages in Greece for example at University German studies require having substantial knowledge of German language in order to study. Many courses are also being offered in English language at Greek universities.

In many regions of Greece, the recognition to other languages has also been given for instance allowing Turkish population to learn their language, it shows some form of bilingual or multilingualism emerging in a monolingual country. Moreover, other languages such as Arabic, Bulgarian, Russian etc are also becoming a popular language as means for gaining economic benefits by learning these additional languages along with the Greek.

Greek is widely used in social domains, the street signs are available in both Greek and Latin, in locations where tourists are often found the signs also appear in French, Russian, English, Turkish, Spanish etc. Many media outlets such as TV channels, newsrooms, radio broadcasting, newspapers appear both in Greek and English, at times in some other languages such as Albanian, Arabic and Turkish as well. When it comes to movies, many of the movies are available in Greek but some of the most popular are American Tv shows and movies which are in English languages. Broadcasting related to children are dubbed in Greek language.