Bulletin

Issue: November/December 2007

News

The pleasure of Greek

‘Can the language survive in Australia?’ asks linguistics expert Alexandra Aikhenvald

Iconic Greek hang-outs like Café Greco in Chapel Street could soon become the sites of an ambitious study which seeks to record the influence of Aussie English on the Greek language.

Linguistics researchers will accompany Greek speakers on their daily lives, recording their café chat, breakfast banter, jokes and conversation and later analyse it in terms of grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and social context.

The Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe (jointly with the National Centre for Hellenic Studies and Research) has received an ARC Linkage grant of $500,000 over five years to do the research.

The project, in collaboration with the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Greek Government, will compare communities in Australia and South America – possibly Argentina or Brazil.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that the style of Greek spoken in the diaspora has some marked differences to the national language.

‘When young Australian Greeks go back to Greece people often accuse them of not speaking properly,’ says linguistics researcher, Professor Alexandra Aikhenvald, the Associate Director of the Research Centre.

She gives an example. The Greek word depózito means water tank. This is close to the English word ‘deposit’. Australian Greeks now use depózito to refer to a deposit in a bank. To a speaker of standard Greek this would be unintelligible.

Another example concerns gender. The words for boy – pedi – and girl – koritsi – are neuter but Greek speakers in Australia often refer to pedi as ‘he’ and to koritsi as ‘she’, just as they would in English.

The way people select their words is of great interest to Professor Aikhenvald and Director of the Centre, Professor Bob Dixon, who have compiled grammars for many of the world’s endangered languages.

Professor Aikhenvald jokes about the girl in Papua New Guinea who called her long dark locks ‘father hair’ because anything big is given this gendered description.

Professor Dixon makes a parallel with an Australian language he recorded in which a full rainbow is called a ‘grandfather rainbow’ and a half one, a ‘father rainbow’. Professor Aikhenvald gives another Greek example. Older Greeks often put articles before Christian names. Professor Dixon would then be referred to as The B ob.

Exploring the differences between languages is of major consequence in terms of the survival of culture. Professor Aikhenvald hopes the new study will address some of these important issues.

‘How do community languages survive in multicultural Australia and elsewhere? How do they change to fit in with the major language spoken around them? Do they become similar to English? If yes, in what way? And what are the prospects for the survival of immigrant languages in different countries under different conditions?’

The Greek language, with 4,000 years of documentation and extensive use in communities outside its traditional domain, is a fruitful area for study of how languages in contact evolve, survive and can be maintained, she says.

‘What makes Greek special? It has one of the longest histories of documentation. Its role in European civilisation and culture cannot be underestimated. Greek is pluricentric – it is spoken in numerous areas. It has the status of an official language in two countries – Greece where it is currently spoken by about 11 million people and Cyprus with half a million speakers.’

Outside Greece there are more than 5.5 million Greek speakers in 92 countries across five continents. Australia has the third largest concentration with 700,000 speakers and Greek is the second most common community language in Melbourne and Adelaide.

Language scholars meet

Fifteen of the world’s top linguistics scholars gathered at La Trobe University’s recently, shedding light on the ways in which the human mind operates.

Whether we are engaged in antiterrorist surveillance or global trade deals, trying to foster social cohesion or scientific research, deep knowledge of the way languages operate across cultures is essential.

Professor A ikhenvald says: ‘About three thousand languages are spoken across the five continents of the modern world. Are they all able to express the logical relations that we take for granted in English?’