Greek

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Greek language maintenance and shift in the Greek community of Wellington

Maria Verivaki

Literature Review:

Jamieson (1980) Greek parents were the most consistent users of their own language in the home.  They also expressed the strongest desire to retain their language.

Greek Community (1989)

• NZ Census 1,500 born in Greece (or Cyprus).  1000 live in Wellington
• Census figure based on religious affiliation in the Greek Orthodox Church (4000 Greeks in NZ), with 2500 (62.5%) in greater Wellington area
• Community Lists: à clear way to define Greek ethnicity (fn, some did not subscribe)
• 710 households in combined Wellington list (LMP—community lists crosschecked by local knowledgeable people)..total 2508 people

History

• 76% of all Greeks lived in Wellington in 1966
• Chain Migration (related families)
• Ethnic suburbs (Mt Victoria, Miralar)
• (similar trend in Australia noted in Tamis 1985)
• Highly organised  community (large number of recreational and educational groups)

Methodology

• Sociolinguistic interview (adapted from Adlam 1987, ‘Aipolo 1989
• Demographic and personal/background information
• Self-report scales to Determine oral and written abilities in Greek & English
• Self-report scale to determine degree of use of Greek and English with different addressees and in different settings
• Written use of Greek and English,
• Some open-ended questions concerning attitudes towards the Greek and English languages and Greek language maintenance
• Five pilot interviews conduct
• Community officials were contacted to obtain their subscription lists (from these a random sample of different households was selected
• Each household contacted by letter which detailed purpose of project
• Contact was made by telephone to find participants
• Participants chosen by random sampl
• Generational Group (important variable) was defined as follows: (following Dem
• Foreign-born are first generation
• 1b Foreign-born who lived in in the foreign country for less than the first ten years of their life (following Clyne 1976)
• Native-born (with one or more parents foreign-born) are second generation
• Native–born to Native-born parents are third generation
• Insider Status was important.  High degree of participation from those who knew the interviewer (personally or through friends), and low degree of participation from randomly selected  households who did not know the interviewer

Methodology

• Generation, age, sex (related to hypothesis)
• Spouse’s heritage (inter-marriage), visit to Greece, attendance in Greek Orthodox services (based on Demos’ study of  Gk-Am community)
• Occupation (Elley-Irvine scale judged unsuitable),
• Participation in Greek-related activities (based on church attendance, listening to Greek radio, watching Gk videos, having Greek visitors, sending their children to Greek school, participation in Greek community functions -dances, sports activities, and regional group activities)
• Attendance at NZ Greek School (for written lg assessment) (based on personal knowledge as member of the community)

Greek Language Ability

• More than half of the community claimed a high level of ability for understanding and speaking Greek, no one was recorded as having no speaking ability
• Order of proficiency (understanding, speaking, reading, writing)
• Decreasing proficiency across each succeeding generation across the four language skills
• Older subjects have higher levels of proficiency than younger subjects
• Little difference between males and females proficiency (slightly higher for females, opposite in Demos’s American study )
• Higher level of proficiency found for those who (1) visited Greece (2) attended church or (3) attended Gk language school
• Occupation does not correlate with language proficiency
• Attendance at Gk Language School correlates with reading and writing skills
• ‘Exposure [to the Greek language] seems to be the key to language maintenance in this community’
• After generation 1, there is decreasing exposure to the Greek language (pg 86)

Greek Language Use

 

Hypothesis: the greater proficiency in a language, the greater use of that language

• Focus on spoken language amongst family members
  (method: single score given for language use in the home if parents/siblings live outside NZ, otherwise mean score used from scale 0-5, if grandparents not residing in NZ, no score given, Grandparents not distinguished for setting or interlocutors)
• Greek used more often than English by all family members
• Greek is spoken more to grandparents and parents than to other members of the family
• Gen1 makes the most use of Greek, Gen3 the least use of it
• Gen 1 uses mainly Greek to all members of the family, with the most English to children
• No generational group uses one language to all family members
•  All use one language consistently to different types of addressees (eg older or younger family members)
• Between equals and subordinates the shift is greater
• Gen1 and 2 are almost mirror images of each other
• For Gen1b and 2 average language use with parents and grandparents almost mirror the pattern for siblings, spouse and children
• The shift proceeds at a faster rate between Gen1 and Gen2

Generalisations: (pg 91)

 

(1)           The results are generalisable to non-family members

(2)           The results are related to proficiency. The better speakers of Greek, the more they use Greek

The home is one of the few language environments (and the most vunerable) for the maintenance of Greek

 

• There is a tendency to use Greek to all addressees in a church environment (pg 93)
• Females use Greek more often than males (when talking  to children)
• Age (Old 61 plus, Middle 31-60, Young (30 years and younger)—based on sample sizes
• Younger age group of Gen2 are the greatest users of Greek with their children (perhaps due to greater awareness –pg 96)—WARNING—the situation may change as the children grow older
• Inter-marriage (inter-marriage affects language use, intermarried females use more Greek than inter-married males, only intermarried Gen1 informants have maintained the language with any degree of success)
• Outside the home environment
• Gen1 uses mainly Greek to all Greek addresses (including childreing)
• Gen2 uses less Greek, and mainly English to NZ born Greeks, but use it more to other people’s children than their own

Attitudes towards the speaking Greek in the company of non-Greek speakers

• Less Greek than English, with each succeeding generation using less Greek
• Felt Greek rude, but  felt everyone had some knowledge of English

 

Attitudes towards Greek (see Table 19 for attitude statements)

 

• Attitude statements (positive & negative scale 1-5)  & interview comments
• Core value for 1^st generation, succeeding generations have desire to maintain the language (similar to Costantakos 1982), and that this desire to maintain the lg increases across generations
• Informants supports positive statements, negative statements were mixe
• People tended to agree with statement that ‘Greeks in NZ use too many English words when they speak Greek)—suggesting English use is inevitable
• 7/17 statements show generational differences
• More useful information was gathered from comments on (1) the usefulness of knowing the Greek lg, (to return to or visit Greece or in public settings to exclude auditors –the later from younger speakers only), on (2) the politeness factors associated with speaking Greek (in company of non-Greeks), (3) the cultural and educational value of the Greek language). Response rates vary between 17-45% for each of these points.
• 1^st and 2^nd generation speakers differ in their attitudes towards speaking Greek in public.

 

Conclusions

• Steps that need to be taken
• Visits to Greece or Cyprus (maintain closer links and increase positive attitudes)
• Participation in Greek-related activities (particularly important in cases of inter-marriage)
• Speaking Greek in the home