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Μήγαρις ἔχω ἄλλο στὸ νοῦ μου πάρεξ ἐλευθερία καὶ γλώσσα;


 
Welcome to the homepage of the
Citizens' Movement for the Re-introduction of the Polytonic System

On this Web site you will find information and opinions about the polytonic system, i.e. the use of three accents (acute, grave, circumflex) and two breathings (rough, smooth) in all forms of the written Greek language (ancient, modern, dêmotikê, or kathareuousa) and for all kinds of texts (ranging from Ph.D. dissertations to childrens books). Our goal is to provide:

  • arguments in favor of the polytonic system and its re-introduction, by examining the many facets of the problem;
  • many and as important as possible opinions/statements by known (or less known) citizens, written especially for our Web site;
  • interesting texts which either have been written especially for our site or have been taken from printed material after OCR;
  • historical facts starting with the so-called “Trial of the accents” (1942) and going up to the most recent discussions in Parliament.

We hope that this Web site will convince those who believe that the polytonic system is obsolete and useless that the actual fact is the exact opposite: accents and breathings are an essential part of Greek language and we believe that the so-called “monotonic reform” of 1982 is a tragic error, a crime against Greek civilization. And the worst: the monotonic writing system has then been imposed by the state to schools (often with the guilty collaboration of uninformed or irresponsible teachers) so that nowadays young people have grown up with the conviction that accents and breathings are useless and belong to the past. It is our duty to correct that error.

If you have never learned how to accent or if you have forgotten how, we suggest you read the accentuation rules by Triantafyllidis and Tsopanakis. Actually the polytonic system has never really left us as you can see on photos of polytonic inscriptions around us.

For those who would like to write polytonic Greek on their computers, we supply keyboard layouts and other technical information and references to tools which make text processing or Web page creation easy and efficient.

For those of you who would like to help us correct this historical error and re-establish the real form of written Greek language, we have included some suggestions on the page “What can I do?” and we are grateful in advance for any help you may provide.

Finally, since the polytonic system is of importance for all Greek speakers independently of their political, religious or philosophical beliefs, this Web page will obviously and necessarily remain a neutral frame through which any citizen in favor of the polytonic system may freely express his/her opinions.


Professor, Computer Science Department, Télécom Bretagne (Brest, France)
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