Georgios N. Chatzidakis

Georgios Hadzidakis (1915)

Georgios Nikolaou Chatzidakis ( Greek Γεώργιος Νικολάου Χατζιδάκις , also in the transcription Hatzidakis ; born November 11, 1848 or November 23, 1848 in Myrthios , Crete ; † June 28, 1941 in Athens ) was a Greek linguist and neo-Greekist . He is considered the founder of modern linguistic research on the Greek language in its entire historical development and was the first professor of linguistics and Indology ( Sanskrit ) at the University of Athens from 1890 to 1923 .

Life

The family traditionally took part in the uprisings on the island of Crete against Ottoman rule . His grandfather Kyriakos had taken part as a captain in the uprising of 1821, Georgios himself, after attending school in Rethymno , took part in the uprising of 1866 at the age of 18 at the side of his father. After another three years of attending school in Athens, Chatzidakis enrolled in the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Athens for Classical Philology . In 1877, in a university competition in linguistics, he won a scholarship for further studies in linguistics in Germany, which he then did at the Universities of Leipzig with Georg Curtius and Karl Brugmann , Jena with Eduard Sievers and Berthold Delbrück and Berlin with Johannes Schmidt , i.e. with some young grammarians perceived. Since then, Chatzidakis has been in contact with German researchers such as Albert Thumb , who was over 15 years his junior and whose necrology he wrote, and has also published in German, in particular the introduction to modern Greek grammar , which is still often cited today . After his return to Greece he was first a high school teacher in Athens and received his doctorate in the following year with a dissertation Συμβολή εις την Ιστορίαν της Ελληνικής Γλώσσης ("Contribution to the history of the Greek language") at the university there. In the same year he was appointed as a private lecturer, in 1885 as an associate professor, in 1890 he was given the chair for linguistics and Indology (Sanskrit), which he held until 1923. In 1897 he left his teaching post to fight alongside his Cretan compatriots for the island's independence. In 1906 he was elected Prytanen ("Rector") of the University of Athens, in 1926 a member and vice-president of the newly founded Academy of Athens , of which he was president in the following academic year 1927/28. In 1907 he proposed the poet Georgios Souris (Γεώργιος Σουρής, 1853–1919) for the Nobel Prize for Literature as Vice Rector . At the same time, Chatzidakis was the first president of the University of Thessaloniki, founded in 1925 . In addition, he was a member of numerous scientific societies (1900 corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences ).

Services

Chatzidakis' basic linguistic conceptions include the view that language is not a fabricated product, but a system that develops over the generations with the needs of people. In relation to the Greek language, this means for Chatzidakis that the Greek language is unique in its development from Homeric times to the present day. Therefore, he opposed the view that there was a diglossia in Greece , but instead claimed that the spoken language was rather part of the historical development of the one Greek language, and showed that the Katharevousa had developed from the Alexandrian koine as well almost all modern Greek dialects (Chatzidakis also published on Tsakonian , the only dialect that does not go back to the Koine, but to its ancient Doric precursor). In the Greek language question , Chatzidakis followed against Ioannis Psycharis , a proponent of the vernacular, the middle way of Adamantios Korais and took a position in favor of Katharevousa as the state language.

Consequently, Chatzidiakis suggested by the Greek government in 1908 under the title Ιστορικόν Λεξικόν της Ελληνικής Γλώσσης ( "Historical Dictionary of the Greek Language") the project a lexicon ολοκλήρου της Ελληνικής γλώσσης από της πρώτης εμφανίσεώς της μέχρι σήμερον ( "the entire Greek language from their first appearance up Into the Present ”), which should present the development of the Greek vocabulary in detail , taking into account etymology , phonetics , syntax and semasiology . For this purpose, with the support of the government of Eleftherios Venizelos in particular, a Κέντρον Συντάξεως του Ιστορικού Λεξικού της Zentrumλληνικής Γλώσσης ("Center for the creation of the historical lexicon of the Greek language") was founded. The original goal was to start publication on the centenary of the liberation in 1921, but the goal could not be achieved for various reasons, not least because of its gigantic size. Later the meantime of which was the Academy of Athens -run center with a considerable reduction of the program renamed Κέντρον Συντάξεως του Ιστορικού Λεξικού της Νέας Ελληνικής Γλώσσης ( "Center for the creation of the Historical Dictionary of the Modern Greek Language"), 2003 again in Κέντρον Ερεύνης των Νεοελληνικών Διαλέκτων και Ιδιωμάτων - Ι.Λ.Ν.Ε. (= Ιστορικόν Λεξικόν της Νέας Ελληνικής, της τε κοινώς ομιλουμένης και των ιδιωμάτων ιδιωμάτων ";

In addition, Chatzidakis was a member of the Επιτροπή τοπωνυμιών (Place Name Committee) founded in 1909, which in the new Greek nation-state, especially in multi-ethnic northern Greece ( Macedonia , Western Thrace ), made substantiated proposals to the Ministry of the Interior for the Hellenistic renaming of place names.

Awards

• Αργυρός Σταυρός του Τάγματος του Σωτήρος ("Silver Cross of the Order of the Redeemer ")
• Χρυσός Σταυρός του Τάγματος του Σωτήρος ("Golden Cross of the Order of the Redeemer")
• Σταυρός των Ανώτερων Ταξιαρχιών του Τάγματος του Φοίνικα ("Cross of the Grand Commanders of the Phoenix Order ")
• Άρχων Μέγιστος Διδάσκαλος του Γένους ("Supreme Teacher of the People", title awarded by the Ecumenical Patriarchate )

Fonts (selection)

• Συμβολή εις την Ιστορίαν της Ελληνικής Γλώσσης ("Contribution to the history of the Greek language"). Diss. Athens.
• Introduction to modern Greek grammar . Leipzig 1892, reprint: Hildesheim / Wiesbaden 1977 (Library of Indo-European Grammars, 5), online .
• About the ancestry of the ancient Macedonians . Athens 1897.
• Και πάλιν περί της Ελληνικότητος των Αρχαίων Μακεδόνων . ("Once again on the Greek culture of the ancient Macedonians"). Reprint: Περί του Ελληνισμού των Αρχαίων Μακεδόνων. 1992.
• The language issue in Greece. Athens 1905, online .
• Μεσαιωνικά και Νέα Ελληνικά . 2 vols., Athens 1905. (“Studies in Byzantine and Modern Greek”).
• Σύντομος ιστορία της νεοελληνικης γλώσσης . Athens 1915. (“A Brief History of the Modern Greek Language”).
• Albert Thumb . In: Indogermanisches Jahrbuch 4, 1916, 235–241.
• Περί της διαιρέσεως της ιστορίας της ελληνικής γλώσσης εις διαφόρους περιόδος , in: Επετηρίυς 1930 πετηρίυ Ετανναναν , in: Επετηρίυ Εταντς 1930 , in: Επετηρίυταντς , in: ΕπετηρίυΕττιναναν, 1930,. (“On the division of the history of the Greek language into different periods”).

literature

• Brita Bayer: The Greek language question, German science and Georgios Chatzidakis , in: Göttinger Contributions to Byzantine and Modern Greek Philology 2, 2002, 5–22.
• Margarethe Billerbeck , Jacques Schamp (ed.): Kainotomia: the renewal of the Greek tradition . Universitätsverlag Freiburg Switzerland, 1996, p. 125, ISBN 3-7278-1090-4 .
• Robert Browning : Medieval and Modern Greek . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1969, 2nd ed. 1983, p. 10, ISBN 0-521-23488-3 , Google books: [1] .
• Armin Paul Frank (Ed.): Translate, understand, build bridges. Humanities and literary translation in international cultural exchange. Berlin: Erich Schmidt (Göttingen Contributions to International Translation Research, Vol. 8), p. 438, ISBN 3-503-03071-9 .
• Peter Mackridge : "They speak like a book": GN Hatzidakis (1848–1941) and the defense of Greek diglossia , in: Κάμπος. Cambridge Papers in Modern Greek 12 (2004) pp. 69-87.
• Peter Mackridge: Byzantium and the Greek language question . In: David Ricks , Paul Magdalino (Eds.): Byzantium and the Modern Greek Identity . Ashgate, Farnham 1998, pp. 49-61, ISBN 0-86078-613-7 .
• Pavlos Tzermias : The search for identity of the new Hellenism: a study on the national question with special consideration of the Macedonia problem . Universitätsverlag, 1994, p. 229, ISBN 3-7278-0925-6 .
• Ioannis Zelepos : The ethnicization of Greek identity, 1870–1912: State and private actors against the background of the "Megali Idea" . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2002, p. 171 (Southeast European Works, Vol. 113), ISBN 3-486-56666-0 .

Web links

• Entry Hatzidakis, Georgios N. (1848-1941) on the Integrated Website for the History of the University of Athens (in English)
• Georgios Souris is nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature
• Chatzidakis President of the University of Thessaloniki (PDF)
• Tsakonian Bibliography: Small works by Hatzidakis on the Tsakonian
• Project of the Ι.Λ.Ν.Ε. ("Historical Lexicon of the Modern Greek Language")

Individual evidence

1. ^ Changing of Place-names in Greek Macedonia. In: Akritas Macedonian blog. May 17, 2008, accessed November 4, 2014 .