Echoes of the Past: Turkish, Venetian, and Greek

The Oxford University research project presented in this exhibition examines intonation in four dialects of Greek that were in contact with Turkish or Venetian Italian: Corfiot, Cypriot, Cretan, and Asia Minor Greek. In this work, we analyse audio recordings that span more than a century and observe the varieties of intonation through time. We have discovered that Turkish and Italian speech traits still survive in the intonation of Greek dialects today.

Welcome to the Hellenic Centre, London

Hellenic Centre Hall

Echoes of the Past: Turkish, Venetian, and Greek

Contact between populations who speak different languages influences their speech in many ways, for example by borrowing words or by borrowing intonation, the melody of speech.

These influences are echoes of the past: they can reveal past ethnic interactions. They "... open peoples' eyes to the words [or sounds] they share and their minds to the worlds they share". (Nuri Sılay & Spyros Armosti, Shared wor!ds: shared words between Greek and Turkish. Nicosia: UNDP, 2013.)

What is language contact?

Language contact happens every time speakers of different languages interact. This interaction is one of the main reasons for language change. Prolonged contact results in bilingualism and can change the vocabulary and the pronunciation of words.
 
For example, as a result of the Norman conquest in the 11th century, a lot of French words entered English.

When does language contact happen?

At language borders (e.g. between the French and English speaking areas of Canada), between languages with equal prestige (e.g. French, German, Italian and Romansch in Switzerland), or as the result of conquest or migration (e.g. French brought to England).

Languages of Switzerland © 2019 ETH Zurich

Why does language contact change languages?

There are many possible reasons. Two people speaking different languages may wish to make communication easier. A speaker of a low prestige language may imitate a language with higher prestige. A bilingual speaker switching between languages may merge some of their features.

"My hovercraft is full of eels"

Past contact of Greece with Turkey and Venice

Early contact of Corfu, Crete, and Cyprus with Turkey and Venice

Greek–Turkish Contact History

1923 Lausanne Convention: 1½ million Asia Minor Greeks were sent from Turkey to various regions in Greece, and ½ million Turks were sent from Greece to Turkey

Greek songs and dances with Italian or Turkish names

Shadow Puppets

Shadow Puppets

Other characters in the Turkish version depicted different ethnicities in the Ottoman Empire. Ιn the Greek version they showed different regional dialects. One example from the Greek show is Sior Dionisios from Zante, an Ionian island. His speech, singing, and clothing resemble those of a Venetian nobleman (Venetian Sior = Italian Signor, Sir)

Food, games, festivals, and costumes

Evidence of language contact in historical documents

Bilingual letter in Greek and Italian, written in February 1797, in Crete. Angeliki Asti, writing in Greek, asks a monastery in Venice to accept her as a nun. (© Ελληνικό Ινστιτούτο Βυζαντινών και Μεταβυζαντινών Σπουδών Βενετίας.)

Evidence of language contact in historical documents

Between 1802 and 1850, several newspapers and literary magazines in Italian were published in Corfu. Despite the different forces occupying Corfu and the other Ionian Sea islands in the 19th century (including Russian, French and British), Italian culture and language retained a dominant status among the educated urban elites — Italian remained an official language until 1851.

Evidence of language contact in historical documents

Richard Dawkins was Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. Dawkins did linguistic fieldwork in Cappadocia from 1909 to 1911 and wrote Modern Greek in Asia Minor, published in 1916. He showed how Asia Minor Greek mixed elements from Greek and Turkish.

(Click to watch the silent video, opens in a separate window)

Language contact and intonation

Each language or dialect has its own melody (intonation), the way its speakers’ voices go up and down as they speak. Below you can see what speech melodies look like.

In these examples the speakers signal that they are going to continue talking. The Athenian voice does so by going sharply up. The Asia Minor Greek and the Turkish voices drop before going up gently. The Asia Minor Greek melody is like the Turkish one because the speakers of the two varieties had cohabited for nine centuries.

Language contact and intonation

In these examples the speakers are making a statement. The Athenian voice drops sharply and then stays low. The Cretan and the Venetian voices start lower than the Athenian and remain fairly low. The Cretan and the Venetian melodies are similar because their speakers have a shared history of five centuries.

A century of speech recordings

In our project we analyse sound recordings made over the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries to see how speech has changed.

A century of speech recordings

In our project we analyse sound recordings made over the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries to see how speech has changed.

A century of speech recordings

In our project we analyse sound recordings made over the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries to see how speech has changed.

The project team