These are as fair specimens of the current dialect of Greece as I can produce. For it is manifest that while it would be quite easy on the one hand to select a specimen of the living dialect written by mere men of learning, (as from the works of Œconomus,) which should make a much nearer approach to the idiom of Xenophon, it would be equally open on the other to produce a brigand’s song from the mountains of Acarnania containing a great deal more of the elements of what the admirers of unmixed Atticism would be entitled to call corruption. But it is evident that a specimen of the first kind would be no more a fair specimen of the average Greek now spoken, than the polished style of George Buchanan was of the average Latin current in his day; and a brigand’s song were just as fair a specimen of the Greek spoken by people of education in modern Athens, as a ballad in the Cumberland or the Craven dialect is of the English of Macaulay’s History, or Wordsworth’s White Doe. With this remark, by way of explanation, let any person who can read common classical Greek without a dictionary, tell me with what face it can be asserted that the above is a specimen of a new language, in the same sense that Italian is a different language from Latin, and Dutch from German. I find nothing in the extracts given, but such slight variations in verbal form, and in the use of one or two prepositions and pronouns, as the reader of Xenophon will find in far greater abundance when he turns to Homer. The principal syntactic difference observable is the use of νὰ (for ἵνα), with the subjunctive mood, instead of the infinitive, which the modern Greeks have allowed to drop; but this is a usage, borrowed from the Latin I have often thought, of which very frequent examples occur in the New Testament; and besides, a mere new fashion in the syntactical form of a sentence was never dreamt of by any sane grammarian, as the sufficient sign of a new language. In English, for instance, we say, I beg you will accept this, and, I beg you to accept this. Now suppose one of these forms of expression to become obsolete, by a change which mere fashion may effect any day, and the other to become all dominant, could, I ask, any such change as this, or a whole score of such changes, be said to corrupt the English language in such a degree as to constitute a new tongue? Much less could the introduction of a few new words, formed according to the analogy of the language, be said to achieve such a transformation, though an academic purist might indeed refuse to put such words as ἡλιοτυπία (photography), and ἀτμοπλoῖov (a steam-boat), into his lexicon. As little could a philosophical classical scholar be offended by the loss of the optative mood, (used in the New Testament so sparingly,) and the substitution for it of the auxiliary verb θέλω, which, though it is of comparatively rare occurrence, is just as much according to the genius of the Greek language, as the frequent use of the other auxiliary verb to be, both in classical Greek and Latin. Instead of fastening upon such insignificant peculiarities, a catholic-minded scholar will rather be astonished to find that in three columns of a Greek newspaper of the year 1852, there do not certainly occur three words that are not pure native Greek. In fact the language, so far from being corrupt, as its ignorant detractors assert, is the most uncorrupt language in Europe, perhaps in the world, at the present moment. The Germans boast of their linguistic purity, and sing songs to Hermann who sent the legions of Varus with their lingo so bravely out of the Westphalian swamps; but let any man compare a column of a German newspaper with a column from the ΑΘΗΝΑ, or any other ἐφημερίς issued within the girth of King Otho’s dominions, and he will understand that while the Greek language even now is as a perfectly pure vestment, the German in its familiar use is defaced by the ingrained blots of many ages, which no philologic sponge of Adelung or Jacob Grimm will ever prevail to wash out. There are reasons for this remarkable phenomenon in the history of language, which to a thoughtful student of the history of the Greek people will readily suggest themselves. I content myself with stating the fact.
These things being so, the natural observation that will occur to every one, as bearing on our present inquiry, is, that as the Greek is manifestly a living language, and never was dead, but only suffering for a season under a cutaneous disease now thrown off, those who speak that language are entitled to a decisive voice in the question how their language is to be pronounced, and this on the mere ground that they are alive and speak it; and to their decision we must bow on the sole ground of living authority and possessory right. For every living language exercises this despotic authority over those who learn it; and it is not in the nature of things that one should escape from such a sovereignty. No doubt there may be certain exceptions to which, for certain special philological purposes, this general rule of obedience is liable; but the rule remains. Such an exception, for instance, in the literature of our existing English language, is the peculiar accentuation of many words that occur in Shakspeare, and even in Milton, different from that now used, whereby their rhythm limps to our ear in the places where such words occur. Such exceptions, also, are the dissyllabic words in Chaucer, that are now shortened into monosyllables, and yet must be read as dissyllables by all those who will enjoy the original harmony of the poet’s rhythm. In Greek, as I have already observed, the whole quantitative value of the language has had its poles inverted; in which practice we cannot possibly follow the living users of the tongue, because we learn the language not to speak with them, as a main object, (though this also has its uses seldom thought of by schoolmasters,[42]) but to read the works of their ancient poets, the rhythmical value of whose works their living speech disowns. This is a sweeping exception to that dominancy of usage which Horace recognises as supreme in language; but philological necessity compels; and the modern Athenians must even submit in such points to receive laws from learned foreigners. But with all this large exceptive liberty, we dare not disown the rule. We must follow the authority of their living dictation, so far as the object we have in view allows; and if we are philosophical students of the language, our object never can be resolutely to ignore all knowledge of the elocutional genius and habits of the living people who speak it. It must be borne in mind also, with how much greater ease a living language can be acquired than a dead one; so that were it only for the sake of the speedy mastery of the ancient dialect, a thorough practical familiarity with the spoken tongue ought first to be cultivated. The present practice, indeed, of teaching Greek in our schools and colleges, altogether as a dead language, can be regarded only as a great scholastic mistake; and it may be confidently affirmed by any person who has reflected on the method of nature in teaching languages, that more Greek will be learned by three months’ well-directed study at Athens, where it is spoken, than by three years’ devotion to the language under the influence of our common scholastic and academic appliances in this country.
I am now led, in the last place, to observe, that whatever may be thought of Itacism and of accents, as the dominant norm for the teaching of Greek in this country, one thing is plain, that no scholar of large and catholic views can, after what has been said and proved in this paper, content himself with teaching Greek according to the present arbitrary and anti-classical fashion only. The living dialect also must be taught with all its peculiarities, not only because the heroic exploits of a modern Admiral Miaulis are as well worthy of the attention of a Hellenic student as those of an ancient Phormion; but for strictly philological uses also, and that of more kinds than one. The transcribers of the MSS., for one thing, in the Middle Ages, all wrote with their ear under the habitual influence of the pronunciation which now prevails; and were accordingly constantly liable to make mistakes that reveal themselves at once to those who are acquainted with that pronunciation, but will only slowly be gathered by those whose ears have not been trained in the same way. But what is of more consequence for Hellenic philologers to note accurately is, that the spoken dialect of the Greek tongue, though modern in name and form, is nowise altogether modern in substance: but like the conglomerate strata of the geologists, contains imbedded very valuable fragments of the oldest language of the country. Of this it were easy to adduce proofs from so common a book as Passow’s Greek-German Dictionary, where occasional reference is made to the modern dialect in illustration of the ancient; from which source, I presume, with much else that is of first-rate excellence in lexicography, such references have passed into the English work of Liddell and Scott. But on this head I shall content myself with simply directing the student’s attention to the fact, and appending below the testimony of Professor Ross of Halle—a man who has travelled much in Greece, can write the language with perfect fluency, and is entitled, if any man in Europe is, to speak with the voice of authority on such a point.[43]
I have now finished all that I had to say on this subject, which has proved perhaps more fertile of speculative suggestion and of practical direction than the title at first promised. What I have said will at least serve the purpose for which it was immediately intended, that of justifying my conduct should I find it expedient to introduce any decided innovations in the practice of teaching Greek in our metropolitan University. And if it should further have the effect of inducing any thoughtful teacher to inquire into a curious branch of philology which he may have hitherto overlooked, and to question the soundness of the established routine of classical inculcation in some points, whatever disagreeable labour I may have gone through in clearing the learned rubbish from so perplexed a path will not have been without its reward. Any sympathizing reader who may communicate with me, wishing that I should explain, reconsider, or modify any statement here made, will find me, I hope, as willing to listen as to speak, and not more zealous for victory than for truth.
EDINBURGH: T. CONSTABLE,
PRINTER TO HER MAJESTY.
Footnotes:
[1] Ego sonorum causam tueor ex edicto possessorio, et ut prætor, interdixi de possessione.
[2] An Essay on the Pronunciation of the Greek Language. By G. T. Pennington, M.A., late Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. London: Murray. 1844. This is the work that I recommend to the English student who wishes to understand the subject in detail, without wading through the confounding mass of pertinent and impertinent matter that the learned eloquence of more than three centuries has heaped up.
[3] Sylloge scriptorum qui de linguæ Græcæ vera et recta pronuntiatione Commentarios reliquerunt; edidit Havercampus. Ludg. Bat., 1740. Vol. ii. p. 220
[4] Joh. Rudolfi Wetstenii: pro Græca et genuina linguæ Græcæ pronuntiatione Orationes Apologeticæ. Basil; 1686, p. 27. The whole passage is quoted in the prefixed mottoes.