The merciless slaughter of the Greek language

Without any doubt, Georgios Papiniotis, professor and former rector of the National and Kapodistrian University, is an outstanding scientific linguist. But he'd be invincible if he weren't gifted with so many teachers who leave uninvaded horrible tongue-killing shafts. Apparently, the authors fear being characterized by many non-linguistic Greeks as “strange” or … “shopping”.

This indifference of many teachers to the destruction of our language finally ranks our educational system on the fringes of European education. Fortunately, distinguished Greek journalists brought Spartan studies around the incomparable Greek language by publishing “dictionaries” such as “The Children of the Square” along with euthymographic scrolls such as Nikos Siphoros. Here we are talking about the “dictionary” of the linguistic margin. Mendes Postanzoklou (Post) hurled similar slurs at Greek linguistic logicodatism. Post, a brilliant humorist and painter, satirized pure Eussian logic with texts exposing political fallacies, as well as any tendency to idealize trivialities.

But to be more specific, let's sample typical language stems from the tongue-killing syrpetto. So, we begin with the following linguistic objections:

• 99 percent of the boulevard that connects the center of Athens to the northern suburbs is called “Leoforos Kifisias” after this busy street. In other words, Kifisia automatically becomes more valuable … Kifisia! Once I hailed a taxi to go to Kifissia. The taxi driver told me “If you go down Kifisias Avenue you will be delayed by the traffic”. “You mean Kifisia Avenue”? I asked the taxi driver. “I did not say Kifisias”! “But the suburb you're taking me to is called Kifisia, not Kifisia”… The taxi driver didn't speak to me, but looked at me disdainfully.
• “Alpha point is three and a half kilometers from Beta point on the map”, instead of the correct three and a half. The term three and a half is used liberally and mercilessly in other expressions:

– Three and a half (instead of three and a half) million. This cord is used in conferences, radio and television debates, and lectures in auditoriums. Next, this “example” takes on archaic dimensions, with no one correcting a verbal or typographical error due to linguistic vulgarity.

• Both G. Babiniotis and other Greek scholars undoubtedly accept the vernacular instead of northern Epirus.

According to Erasmus (1466-1536), I strongly disagree with this apologetic of las stulticia, the sins of half-knowledge and the “fame of the Morea”.

I occasionally see Mr. on Parliament Channel. G. I will watch Babiniodis' show. I did not hear him or the woman asking him the questions refer to the aforementioned stubs. I leave the decision on this grammatical tolerance to my readers.