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The Greek ‘Language War’ You’ve Never Heard Of (And a Poem About the Moon)

Hello and welcome back to Picture Perfect Greek! My name is Andy, and today, we’re going to learn some Greek by diving into the world of poetry.

Our guide will be Yiannis Ritsos, a poet whom I particularly love. Ritsos was a left-wing poet, and in Greece, especially during the 20th century, that tells you something significant about the very language he chose to use.

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A Tale of Two Greeks: Katharevousa vs. Dimotiki

You see, for a long time in Greece, you could make a pretty accurate guess about someone’s political leanings just by listening to how they spoke Greek. This has faded a bit now, but it was a major social and political dividing line. The conflict was between two forms of the language:

* Katharevousa (Καθαρεύουσα): This was the “clean” language. It was a version of Greek that looked backward, trying to stay closer to Ancient Greek or the Greek of the Bible. It was not the language that people actually used in their daily lives, at least not in the second half of the 20th century. Politically conservative parties, people, and organizations tended to use this more complex, archaic language.

* Dimotiki (Δημοτική): This was the “language of the people.” Since the 19th century, there had been a growing movement to embrace the language as it was actually spoken. Politically progressive people, parties, and movements always championed Dimotiki.

This created a very clear division in society. Katharevousa became a sign of status. Lawyers and doctors, for example, often spoke it. If you went to a university, you were frequently confronted with it. I have some old medical textbooks at home from a time I was interested in medicine, and even though they were used in the 1980s in a fully modern Greek environment, they are written in Katharevousa! It was a class marker. Being able to speak, write, and understand this language made you a “higher class” person.