Brm/Gt/Ela Rem Mlk/Cilare/Kk. What lies behind these … words? No, it’s not slang. This is a dialogue between two friends GreekOh really teenagers cut out for brevity. So let’s decipher the dialogue:

Brm: I’m bored.
– GT: Why?
– Ela remlk: Come on, you moron.
– Cilare: Relax.
– Kk: Okay.

Many teenagers use Greek when communicating with their friends. Almost every second person writes in Greek, even from time to time. The main reason is the convenience, the picture that the Greek language offers them, since this writing is shorter and simpler, they do not need to memorize the spelling of words. Or do children overcome their insecurities in misspelling words in this way? And do they really care about it? OUR research conducted by students of the 1st experimental general education lyceum Amarusi among their peers on the use of the Greek language, showed that one in five communicates online with their parents in Greek but with English letters. Is it any wonder that only 3.5% of teenagers communicate online with their grandparents in Greek?

In particular, 8.3% of children always use Greek in their online communication. More than one in four (27.1%) choose them quite often, and 15.3% – sporadically. Thus, 35.4% of students use Greek intensively. The rest said they rarely or never use them.

“Many children feel socially excluded unless they ‘adopt’ Greek in order to be accepted.”

The vast majority of students (84%) use them in Instagramwhile about half (41%) tik tak. One in four uses them messenger and to Discord. Less popular is Greek on other platforms and apps such as the school platform. “e-class” (3.5%), at facebook (4.2%), Email (6.9%) and whatsapp (6.9%). Logically, the highest percentages are found on Instagram, TikTok and Viber (32.5%) because these are the apps that young people use every day, either to chat with friends or for fun. Other apps (Facebook, email, e-class) are either not as popular with teenagers or are associated with school. Thus, the big difference in the use of the Greek language depending on the applications depends on the popularity, purpose and users of each of them.

Almost nine out of ten students (86.8%) reported that they use Greek to communicate with friends/classmates. It is noteworthy that 20.1% also use them when addressing their parents. Very few write in Greek to teachers (4.9%) and grandparents (3.5%).

5.6% of students use them because they feel insecure because they are bad at spelling, 4.9% because they like to follow fashion, and 4.9% want to be accepted. About half (47.2%) resort to them, as they often use English words and, using Greek, i.e. writing in Latin letters, they do not have to change the language on the keyboard.

“Based on the remaining evidence, we conclude that many children feel socially excluded unless they “adopt” Greek—perhaps some other fashion? – to be accepted. In addition, some children, influenced by English, use this language for self-expression, as a result of which they do not use Greek characters, preferring Greek ones, “say the students who organized the study under the guidance of their philology teacher Dora Kunduras. .

Does the use of Anglo-Greek affect students’ spelling and written expression? The majority (62.5%) believe that they distort the language. However, this assessment is contradictory, given that most of them simultaneously disagree that, because of the Greek language, it is difficult for them to write Greek correctly (61.8%), express themselves in writing (63.9%) and orally (84). .3%) in Greek. . As the teenagers who organized the study confess, “During the discussion, we realized that we were not in a position to decide whether the use of Greek was a problem for the Greek language. But in our experience, we can observe the impact they have on young people. We also noticed that many adults, although ignorant, i.e. not experts, have very strong opinions on subjects that do not particularly concern them and do not understand, such as the language of youth and the Greek language.

Teamwork

The guys are disarming and to the point when they explain why, although the study was done in October 2022, they chose to publish it now. As they say, “the last few weeks have been a quieter period because most teachers are no longer forced to finish material as they were in previous months. In addition, it was nice that we worked as a team.

Thus, the lesson became more fun and playful. Isn’t it better to work in a group than alone? – says a group of children, and a student of the 1st lyceum adds: “For example, I worked in my group with three more children whom I did not talk to at the beginning of the year. But now, thanks to this research, a friendly bond has been established between us, although an atmosphere of cooperation does not always reign in our class. Working in groups, we were “forced” to cooperate with each other, to finally discover that it was nice to communicate inside and outside the course. As a result, we got to know each other better and started making new friends.”

Numbers

62.5% of students use Greek online and 35.4% use it intensively.

86.8% they choose Greek to communicate with friends/peers.

84% they use Greek on Instagram and 41% on TikTok.

47.2% they resort to Greek, as they often use English words and do not need to switch languages ​​on the keyboard.

61.8% disagrees that the use of Greek affects spelling in Greek.

POINT OF VIEW

In the dark constellation of Greek

Euripides Garantoudis*

The widespread use for several years of the Greek language (writing Greek in the Latin alphabet), especially by the younger community, raises reasonable concerns about whether this will negatively affect written language proficiency and therefore a decrease in positive performance in learning environments. The starting point of relevant reflection is that both secondary and university education, where the Greek language is taught, read and written using the Greek alphabet, obviously tries – and largely succeeds – to act as a deterrent to the negative effects of Greek. In the past, the use of Greek was mainly due to the lack of a Greek keyboard on electronic devices, or the difficulty of using it. Today, however, operating systems of all kinds of devices (mobile phones, tablets and computers) have Greek and Latin alphabet keyboards that are equally easy to use. Consequently, the current use of Greek, a code of linguistic communication characterized by non-standardized, fluent writing, to the same extent that it is associated with young people’s great familiarity with English, essentially leads the written language to slide towards ease, towards indeterminacy. meaning in the compression of thought. Therefore, it must be related to a more general erosion of the language in its written expression.

Blaming the youth community for a lack of language sensitivity overlooks the wider picture of the erosion of the written word.

As a university teacher, during the pandemic, I had the experience of conducting exams via the Internet. What I can publicly share, as I believe the vast majority of educators do, is that the high percentage of writing was indicative of a widespread state of documented functional illiteracy: the texts were indicators of ignorance in the use of word processing programs, messy compilations from snippets of Internet sources , typos and unedited. This impossibility of functional communication in an institutionally coordinated written language environment, such as exams, I consider a communicative container with the Greek language. But blaming youth and the student body for a lack of linguistic sensitivity overlooks the fact that the pattern of erosion of the written word is much broader, and that Greek therefore functions as a youthful manifestation of this more general erosion. Carelessness or inattention and factual errors in the use of the written word in an online environment, especially in social networks, that is, in a large part of the public sphere, leads to the abuse of the formality of the language, the distortion of its meanings, the softening of thought – all this universally worn written language serves as the best school to inculcate the linguistic insensitivity that we censure in Greek. Especially since in reality, when the carriers and culprits of this blurry written word are all sorts of great figures of modern communication and cultural mush, all that prevails and is reproduced on the surface of a large part of online news, this word is now striving to become the dominant example.

* Mr. Evripidis Garantoudis is Professor of Modern Greek Philology at the Faculty of Philology of the Hellenic Academy of Sciences.