February 9th is a date with a double, profound symbolism for modern Greek language and literature. It is the day the national poet Dionysios Solomos passed away in Corfu in 1857, and it is also celebrated as World Greek Language Day, established on the same date.
The choice of this date honors the poet, who, like few others, linked language with freedom, collective memory, and national consciousness.
Solomos was not only the poet of the Hymn to Liberty but also a deeply restless thinker of language itself: its form, its writing, its rules, and its limitations.
A lesser-known but revealing aspect of this stance is highlighted in an extensive article in the magazine TACHYDROMOS on January 20, 1983. Written by Kostas Koumbetsos, it describes the radical position of the national poet regarding writing and orthography.
As the article notes:“The national poet Dionysios Solomos was a revolutionary of our language. He wrote his works in the vernacular and denounced the complex writing system and its tonal burden. He even used his own phonetic and monotonic system in many of his texts, showing the way for our linguistic liberation. A supporter of the vernacular, who wished to abolish historical orthography, our national poet Dionysios Solomos was a revolutionary—not only in language but also in its written form.”
He often said about language: “My soul aches to see so many young people wasting year after year.”
Use of the Vernacular
Choosing the vernacular was deeply ideological. According to the article, Solomos “boldly set aside the dead language of the highly educated of his time and wrote his works in the living, simple language of the people—the demotic.”
Particular interest lies in his adoption of phonetic and monotonic writing in many manuscripts: ,“Consciously, he used a monotonic and phonetic system in his writings, especially in his youth,” notes the author, attributing this choice also to the influence of the poet Ioannis Vilaras, who had proposed abolishing accents, breathings, and double consonants. As Vilaras said:
“Every unnecessary character makes the language misspelled.”
Manuscripts and Phonetic Writing
Solomos’ surviving manuscripts, as noted: “Impress anyone who sees them today, as he used an omicron wherever there was omicron or omega indiscriminately, and a iota in place of any iota, eta, upsilon, epsilon-iota, and omicron-iota indiscriminately. This was the system Solomos adopted as a young man to write his Greek.”
Italian Education and Linguistic Challenges
The article also quotes Professor of Modern Greek Philology Kariofilis Mitsakis, explaining that Solomos, raised in the Ionian Islands and educated in Italy, struggled with Greek upon returning to Zakynthos: “Solomos was born and raised in the Ionian Islands, with their strong Italian cultural tradition. He studied in Italy from childhood. There he shaped his linguistic world and naturally developed Italian linguistic skills. As a young man, upon returning to Zakynthos, he struggled with Greek. What he knew was perhaps enough to communicate with locals but not enough to comfortably express and formulate his poetry.
So Solomos began Greek language lessons, cultivated it systematically, and wrote his first Greek poems. In these, all his initial awkwardness in the national language is apparent. Later, through diligent study, especially of our folk songs, he mastered the Greek language completely.”
Nevertheless, he continued to reflect on writing: “This is what led him to skillfully use language with phonetic spelling—by ear.”
A notable example is from the manuscript Gynaikas tis Zakynthou, where words such as Ego (I), Kyrios (Lord), and voithisei (help) are written according to purely phonetic logic: “In paragraph 16 of the first chapter, in the phrase ‘gia touto ego parakalontas therma ton Kyrion na katadextei na me voithisei na katalavo to symbolo’—‘Ego’ is written with omicron, ‘Kyrion’ the ‘ki’ with iota, in the word ‘voithisei’ all iotas for various etas and epsilon-iota, and in ‘katalavo’ the ‘vo’ with omicron.”
The Issue of Accents
Dionysios Solomos also differed in his approach to accentuation: “He stressed every syllable to be accented, whether monosyllabic or polysyllabic, with only an acute… He approached the perfected monotonic system of today, which abolishes the entire complex, multifaceted, and redundant accent system that troubled even the greats, but especially the youth. Many argue that Solomos, because he did not know Greek well, wrote phonetically, influenced by his Italian, as other Ionians of his time did. However, it is characteristic that he resorted to this solution to overcome his doubts and be able to use his national language.”
In his famous Dialogue, as Mitsakis notes, Solomos takes an official theoretical stance against the burden of polytonics. With sharp irony, he addresses the “Most Learned”: “You speak of freedom? You whose mind is chained by all the circumflexes written since the invention of orthography until now?”
When the Most Learned comments: “These may be good, but you don’t know orthography,” Solomos angrily replies: “Most philosophical observation. Hail divine accents, acutes, graves, circumflexes. Hail wondrous spirits, smooth, rough! Crows, true crows and worse than the crow that came out of the Ark and fed on remnants left by the flood.”
“Let the New Generation Breathe”
The adoption of the monotonic system had already been supported by progressive linguists and writers since the early 20th century. Georgios Hatzidakis, founder of linguistics in Greece, supported the demotic and monotonic systems. Greek diaspora writers in London—Alexandros Pallis, Argyris Eftaliotis, and Petros Vlastos, followers of Ioannis Psychari—published works in monotonic or unaccented systems.
In 1929, Elissaios Giannidis formulated the first rules of the monotonic system, and in 1941, I.Th. Kakridis faced the “Trial of the Accents” for attempting to abolish them.
The press also contributed to promoting and familiarizing the public with the monotonic system: “Magazines and newspapers, especially after the 1974 political restoration, decisively accelerated the adoption of the monotonic, using the triangle and dot as accent symbols in texts, familiarizing Greeks with the new writing of our language.”
The article concludes by connecting Solomos’ thought with the long journey that ultimately led to the establishment of the monotonic, emphasizing: “Our national poet Dionysios Solomos showed us the way.”
A path that, as noted, allowed “the new generation to breathe.”
