Everything about Katharevousa totally explained
Katharevousa (
Kathareuousa,,, lit. "the purified one"), is a form of the
Greek language conceived in the early
19th century by
Greek intellectual and revolutionary leader
Adamantios Korais (1748–1833). A graduate of the
University of Montpellier in 1788, Korais spent most of his life as an
expatriate in
Paris. Being a
classical scholar, he was repelled by the
Byzantine and later influence on Greek society and was a fierce critic of the ignorance of the clergy and their subservience to the
Ottoman Empire. He held that education was a prerequisite to
Greek liberation.
Katharevousa was set at a midpoint between
Ancient Greek and the
Modern Greek of the time. It stressed both a more ancient vocabulary and a simplified form of the archaic grammar. The first known use of the term "katharevousa" is in a work by the Greek polymath
Nikephoros Theotokis, in 1796.
Part of its purpose was to mediate the struggle between the "archaists" favouring full reversion to archaic forms, and the "modernists". The original name "Katharevousa" can also be translated as "the clean one", implying a form of Greek without extraneous influences, as it may hypothetically have independently evolved from Ancient Greek, but in its modern Greek connotation it merely means "formal language".
In later years, Katharevousa was used for official and formal purposes (such as politics, letters, official documents, and newscasting), while
Dimotiki (δημοτική), 'demotic' or popular Greek, was the daily language. This created a
diglossic situation whereby most of the Greek population was excluded from the public sphere and advancement in education unless they conformed to Katharevousa. In 1976, Dimotiki was made the official language and by the end of the
20th century full Katharevousa in its earlier form had become obsolete. However, many grammatical and syntactical rules that Katharevousa had adopted, and much vocabulary from the Katharevousa strand, have come into contact with Dimotiki during the two centuries of its existence, so that the project's emphasis has made an observable contribution to the language as it's used today. One may suggest that the
Modern Greek of today is no longer the Dimotiki of old, but rather set midway between it and the traditional Katharevousa as stressed in the 19th century, with the concurrent and age-old influence of
Koine Greek. Amongst Katharevousa's later contributions is the promotion of classically based compounds to describe items and concepts that didn't exist in earlier times, such as "newspaper", "police", "automobile", "airplane", "television" and much else, rather than borrowing words directly from other languages.
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