 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Cappadocian Greek" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(January 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
| Cappadocian | |
|---|---|
| Region | Greece, originallyCappadocia (modern-day CentralTurkey) |
Native speakers | 2,800 (2015)[1] (previously thought to beextinct) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | cpg |
| Glottolog | capp1239 |
| ELP | Cappadocian Greek |
 Cappadocian Greek is classified as Critically Endangered by theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger | |
Cappadocian Greek (Cappadocian Greek:Καππαδοκικά, Καππαδοκική Διάλεκτος), also known asCappadocian is a dialect ofModern Greek, originally spoken inCappadocia (modern-day Central Turkey) by the descendants of theByzantine Greeks ofAnatolia.[2] The language originally diverged fromMedieval Greek after the late medieval migrations of theTurks from Central Asia into what is now Turkey began cutting the Cappadocians off from the rest of the Greek-speakingByzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. As a result of thepopulation exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923, all remaining speakers (known in Turkey asRûm, and referred to now asCappadocian Greeks) were forced to emigrate to Greece where they were resettled in various locations, primarily in Central and Northern Greece. The Cappadocians were encouraged to shift to StandardModern Greek as part of their integration into Greece, and their language was thought to be extinct since the 1960s. In June 2005,Mark Janse (Ghent University) and Dimitris Papazachariou (University of Patras) discovered Cappadocians in Central and Northern Greece who could still speak their ancestral language fluently. Many are middle-aged, third-generation speakers who take a very positive attitude towards the language, as opposed to their parents and grandparents.[3] The latter are much less inclined to speak Cappadocian and more often than not switch to StandardModern Greek.
By the fifth century AD, the last of the Indo-Europeannative languages of Asia Minor ceased to be spoken,replaced byKoine Greek.[5] At the same time, the communities of centralAnatolia were becoming actively involved in the affairs of the then Greek-speakingEastern Roman Empire, and some (now Greek-speaking) Cappadocians, such asMaurice Tiberius (r. 582–602) andHeraclius (r. 610 to 641), would even rise to becomeemperors.[6][7]
Cappadocian Greek first began to diverge from theMedieval Greek common language of theByzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire six centuries later,[4] following the Byzantines' defeat at theBattle of Manzikert in 1071. This subsequent civil war and the Seljuk invasion led to the severing of Cappadocia from the rest of the Byzantine world.[8] Among all Greek dialects, Cappadocian Greek is the one most influenced byTurkish,[9][10] but unlikeStandard Modern Greek, it would not be influenced byVenetian orFrench, which entered Modern Greek during theFrankokratia period, when those groups began ruling in Greece following theFourth Crusade'ssacking of Byzantine Constantinople.
The earliest records of the language are in themacaronic poems ofJalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207–1273), who lived in Iconium (Konya), and someghazals by his sonSultan Walad.[11][12] Interpretation of the Greek language texts is difficult as they are written inArabic script, and in Rumi's case without vowel points; Dedes' edition (Δέδες) is the most recent edition.[13][14][15]
By the early 20th century, many Cappadocians had shifted to Turkish altogether (written with the Greek alphabet,Karamanlidika). Where Greek was maintained (numerous villages nearKayseri, includingMisthi,Malakopea,Prokopion,[16]Karvali,[17][18] andAnakou), it became heavily influenced by the surrounding Turkish. However, there are next to no written documents in Medieval or early Modern Cappadocian, as the language was, and still essentially is, a spoken language only. Those educated to read and write, such as priests, would do so in the more classicising literary Greek. The earliest outside studies of spoken Cappadocian date from the 19th century, but are generally not very accurate.
One of the first documented studies wasModern Greek in Asia Minor: A study of dialect of Silly, Cappadocia and Pharasa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1916), byRichard MacGillivray Dawkins (1871–1955), then a fellow ofEmmanuel College, Cambridge and later the first Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature at theUniversity of Oxford, based on fieldwork conducted by the author in Cappadocia in 1909–1911.[19]
After the population exchange, several Cappadocian dialects have been described by collaborators of the Center for Asia Minor Studies (Κέντρον Μικρασιατικών Σπουδών) in Athens: Uluağaç (I.I. Kesisoglou, 1951), Aravan (D. Phosteris & I.I. Kesisoglou, 1960), Axo (G. Mavrochalyvidis & I.I. Kesisoglou, 1960) and Anaku (A.P. Costakis, 1964), resulting in a series of grammars.
In recent years, the study of Cappadocian has seen a revival following the pioneering work onLanguage Contact,Creolization, andGenetic Linguistics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) by Sarah Grey Thomason and Terrence Kaufman, and a series of publications on various aspects of Cappadocian linguistics by Mark Janse, professor atRoosevelt Academy, who has also contributed a grammatical survey of Cappadocian to a forthcoming handbook on Modern Greek dialects edited by Christos Tzitzilis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki).[20]
The recent discovery of Cappadocian speakers by Janse and Papazachariou will result in the release of a new dictionary and a compilation of texts.
Cappadocian Greek is well known from the linguistic literature as being one of the first well documented cases oflanguage death, and in particular the significant admixture of non-Indo-European linguistic features into an Indo-European language.[21] This process was pronounced in southwestern Cappadocia, and included the introduction ofvowel harmony and verb-final word order.
The Greek element in Cappadocian is to a large extent Byzantine, e.g.θίρ ortír 'door' from (Ancient and) Byzantine Greekθύρα (Modern Greekπόρτα, from Italian),ποίκα orέπκα 'I did' from Byzantine Greekέποικα (Modern Greekέκανα).[22] Other, pre-Byzantine, archaisms are the use of the possessive adjectivesμό(ν),σό(ν) etc. from Ancient Greekἐμός, σός, etc. and the formation of theimperfect by means of thesuffix-ισ̌κ- from the Ancient Greek (Ionic) iterative suffix-(ε)σκ-. Turkish influence appears at every level. The Cappadocian sound system includes the Turkishvowelsı,ö,ü, and the Turkishconsonantsb,d,g,š,ž,tš,dž, although some of these are also found in modern Greek words as a result ofpalatalization.
Cappadociannounmorphology is characterized by the emergence of a generalizedagglutinativedeclension and the progressive loss ofgrammatical gender distinctions, e.g.το ναίκα 'the (neuter) woman (feminine)', genitiveναίκα-ιου, pluralναίκες, genitiveναίκεζ-ιου (Ulağaç). Another Turkish feature is the morphological marking of definiteness in the accusative case, e.g.λύκος 'wolf (nominative / unmarked indefinite accusative)' vs.λύκο 'wolf (marked definite accusative)'.
Some South Cappadocian varieties—most notably Ulağaç Cappadocian (UC)—show complete neutralization of grammatical gender in thenoun phrase: the neuter definite articledo (sg.) andda (pl.) and neuter adjective forms are used with all nouns regardless of their historical gender, i.e. a genderlessdeterminer phrase.
| Form | Ulağaç Cappadocian | Gloss | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | do kalon do andra | the.good.N the.man.M | ‘the good man’ |
| Singular | do kalon do neka | the.good.N the.woman.F | ‘the good woman’ |
| Singular | do kalon do pei | the.good.N the.child.N | ‘the good child’ |
| Plural | da kalan da andres | the.good.N.PL the.men.M | ‘the good men’ |
| Plural | da kalan da nekes | the.good.N.PL the.women.F | ‘the good women’ |
| Plural | da kalan da peija | the.good.N.PL the.children.N | ‘the good children’ |
Kesisoglou (1951) already notes the generalized use ofdo/da in UC; later analyses document and discuss the system in detail.[23][24] A typical UC sentence (cited via Kesisoglou and discussed by Janse) is:itó do néka do ándra-t páasen do do xorjó, which can mean either ‘that woman led her husband to the village’ or ‘that woman, her husband led her to the village’, illustrating uniform neuter targets (do) with historically feminine and masculine nouns and the resulting nominative–accusative ambiguity.[24]
Agglutinative forms are also found in theverb system such as thepluperfectήρτα τον 'I had come' (lit. 'I came I was') (Delmeso) on the model of Turkishgeldi idi (geldiydi). Although Cappadocianword order is essentially governed bydiscourse considerations such astopic andfocus, there is a tendency towards the Turkishsubject–object–verb word order with its typological correlates (suffixation and pre-nominalgrammatical modifiers). Turkishvowel harmony is found in forms such asδϋσ̌ϋνδΰζϋ 'I think', aor. 3sgδϋσ̌ΰντσϋ <δϋσ̌ΰντσι (Malakopi), from Turkishdüşünmek,πατισ̌αχης <πατισ̌άχις 'king' (Delmeso), from Turkishpadişah.
The commonality among all Greek Cappadocian dialects is that they evolved from Byzantine Greek under the influence of Turkish. On the other hand, those dialects evolved in isolated villages. This has resulted in a variety of Greek Cappadocian dialects.
Although Cappadocian Greek was once believed to be a dead language, the discovery of a population of speakers has led to an increase in awareness, both within and outside of the Cappadocian community in Greece. In the documentaryLast Words, which follows Mark Janse through Cappadocian-speaking villages on the Greek mainland, community members are seen encouraging each other to use their dialect for ordinary things, such as joke telling. The members of these villages, including such notable figures as the bishop, recount being touched by a presentation given in Cappadocian by Janse on a visit to the region. The bishop went so far as to say that Janse's speech "has lifted their shame." The revitalisation process is seen through examples such as this, wherein the speakers have begun to take back their identity and embrace their mother tongue. Additionally, younger generations are embracing the power of technology to spread awareness, utilisingsocial media about the language to inform the larger Greek population.[citation needed]
Byzantium reverted to Greek (Maurice, born in Cappadocia, was its first Greek emperor); and trade and diplomacy were honored from the very founding of the Imperial city as never in Rome before.
Emperor Maurice who is said to be the first emperor "from the race of the Greeks," ex Graecorum genere.
The Asia Minor Greek dialects spoken in the regions of Sílli, Cappadocia and Phárasa are heavily influenced by Turkish, [...]
Admittedly, of all Asia Minor dialects, Cappadocian is the most heavily affected by Turkish [...]
..medieval place names in the region that can be established are known only from scant references: one Elpidios, Memorophylax of Prokopios, who attended the Council of Chalcedon (451), may have come from Hagios Prokopios (now Urgup, but still called 'Prokopion' by the local Greek population in the early years of this century);
On May 1st, 1923, the agreement on the exchange of the Turkish and Greek minorities in both countries was published. A shock went through the ranks of the people affected – on both sides. Within a few months they had to pack their belongings and ship them or even sell them. They were to leave their homes, which had also been their great-grandfathers' homes, they were to give up their holy places and leave the graves of their ancestors to an uncertain fate. In Cappadocia, the villages of Mustafapasa, Urgup, Guzelyurt and Nevsehir were the ones affected most by this rule. Often more than half the population of a village had to leave the country, so that those places were hardly able to survive...The Greeks form Cappadocia were taken to Mersin on the coast in order to be shipped to Greece from there. But they had to leave the remaining part of their belongings behind in the harbor. They were actually promised that everything would be sent after them later, but corrupt officials and numberless thieves looted the crammed storehouses, so that after a few months only a fraction of the goods or even nothing at all arrived at their new home....Today the old houses of the Greek people are the only testimony that reminds us of them in Cappadocia. But these silent witnesses are in danger, too. Only a few families can afford the maintenance of those buildings....
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)In the town of Güzelyurt in Aksaray Province in the Central Anatolian region of Turkey, 250-year-old arched stone mansions have been transformed into boutique hotels to serve tourists coming to discover the area's cultural and historical treasures. The town is an important part of the historical Cappadocia region...Much of the previously large Greek population in Güzelyurt vanished with the population exchange of the 1920s. "With the population exchange in 1924, Greeks and Turks exchanged places. Before the population exchange, rich Greeks dealing with trade in Istanbul had historical mansions in Güzelyurt," Özeş said. Some houses in the town date back 250 years and a few 100-year-old historical houses also exist, according to Özeş. "They have extremely thick walls. The height of the arches is nearly four to five meters. Each of the houses is a work of art creating an authentic environment."
| Official language | |
|---|---|
| Greek varieties | |
| Sign languages | |
| Other languages | |
