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The Pontic Greek spoken by Muslims in the villages of Beşköy in the province of present-day Trabzon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Hakan Özkan
Hakan Özkan*
Affiliation:
University of Münster
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Extract

This article consists of two parts. The first part provides general information on the language and its speakers: I describe the language, land, and livelihood of the Greek-speaking people of Beşköy in Trabzon province. In this respect it is indispensable to mention migration, which is one of the most serious threats the Greek-speaking community and their language faces today; statistical data show that Beşköy lost half of its population over the past fifty years. Despite these adverse conditions, the language has proved to be resilient enough to remain a preferred means of communication when Greek-speakers come together. In the last subsection, on language and identity, I present testimonies by native people which illustrate that positive attitudes towards both the Greek language and Turkish citizenship or Islamic identity are easily compatible.

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Type
Articles
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , 2013 , pp. 130 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 2013

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References

1 I am very grateful to Peter Mackridge, who provided me with many useful hints and took great pains to read and re-read the draft of this article. Also, I would like to express my gratitude to the DFG (German Research Foundation) for their support.

2 Andrews, P. A., Ethnic Groups in the Republic of Turkey (Wiesbaden 1989) 204 Google Scholar and Mackridge, P., ‘Greek-Speaking Moslems of north-east Turkey: Prolegomena to a study of the Ophitic sub-dialect of Pontie’, BMGS 11 (1987) 115-37Google Scholar, at 115 (hereafter ‘Prolegomena’).

3 Mackridge, ‘Prolegomena’, 117.

4 For Sakarya see Andrews, Ethnic Groups in the Republic of Turkey, 204.

5 See Mackridge, ‘Prolegomena’ 119 and 136. See also Mackridge, P., ‘The Greek spoken in the region of Of (Pontus)’, ίηΛιαλεκτικοί θύλακοι τηςελληνικής γλώσσας/Dialect Enclaves of the Greek Language (Athens 1999) 101-5Google Scholar, at 101, n. 1 for further bibliography (hereafter ‘Of’).

6 Mackridge, P., ‘Bernt Brendemoen, The Turkish dialects of Trabzon. Their phonology and historical development’, BMGS 29 (2005) 95-6Google Scholar.

7 Mackridge ‘Prolegomena’, 118 and ‘Of’ 101, n. 1 lists the few works that have been published on Ophitic. Pietro Bortone, a former student of Peter Mackridge with fieldwork experience in Pontus, recently published a book chapter on the status of Muslim Pontie Greek as a language without models, history and standard ( Bortone, P., ‘Greek with no models, history, or standard: Muslim Pontie Greek’, in Georgakopoulou, A. and Silk, M. (eds), Standard Languages and Language Standards: Greek, Past and Present (London 2009) 67–89 Google Scholar). Dawkins, R. M.’ research in Of and Sìrmene in 1914 was confined to the Christian villages and resulted in his article ‘Folk tales from Sourmena and the valley of Ophis’, Αρχείον Πόντου 3 (1931) 79-122Google Scholar. He also took notes on the dialects of Surmené and Of in notebooks that are now stored in the Special Collections of the Taylor Institution Slavonic and Modern Greek Library of the University of Oxford (R. M. Dawkins, ‘Σούρμενα και τα Σουρμενίτικα ll.vii-16.vii 1914’. The comparison of the data in the notebook on Surmené with Muslim Pontie shows that the dialect described is substantially different from the dialect under study here. Apart from these researchers Ioanna Sitaridou of Cambridge University has undertaken research in the region with an emphasis on the infinitive, topicalization and double object constructions. Sitaridou hosted the first symposium on Muslim Pontie in Cambridge in March 2010.

8 Papadopoulos, A. A., Ιστορικόνλεξικόν τηςποντικής διαλέκτου (Athens 1958-61)Google Scholar, Papadopoulos, A. A., Ιστορική γραμματική τηςποντικήςδιαλέκτου (Athens 1955)Google Scholar and Oikonomidis, D. I., Γραμματική τηςελληνικής διαλέκτου του Πόντου (Athens 1958)Google Scholar.

9 Drettas, G., Aspects pontiques (Paris 1998)Google Scholar.

10 See Bortone, ‘Greek with no models’, 67.

11 Mackridge, ‘Prolegomena’, 115.

12 On ‘imaming’ see Meeker, M. E., Nation of Empire (Washington 2002) 58-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 66-7. Apart from these occupations, men from this area have been famous for their capabilities as soldiers since Ottoman times.

13 Bryer, A. A., Greeks and Tiirkmens: The Pontie Exception (Dumbarton Oaks 1975) 122 Google Scholar.

14 Humlum, J., Zur Geographie des Maisbaus (Copenhagen 1942) 90 Google Scholar.

15 AU data collected from the website of the Turkish Statistics Institute. http://www.tuik.gov.tr/PreTablo. do?tb_id=39&ust_id=ll: Accessed on 3 June 2011.

16 This should not make us forget that Trabzon is also famous for its left-wing activists who played an important role in the clashes with nationalist groups in the late 70s. For example, Sinan Kukul, a native of Trabzon, was one of the founders of the revolutionist communist group Devrimci Sol.

17 It is for this reason that the study of the Laz language has been feasible in recent decades. A dictionary written by Uzunhasanoğlu, H. and Avci-Bucaklişi, I., Lazuri Nenapuna/Lazca Sözlük (Istanbul 1999)Google Scholar and a grammar by Goichi, K. and Avcı-Bucaklişi, I., Lazca Gramer/Laz Grammar (Istanbul 2003)Google Scholar have been published. A website on the internet http://www.lazuri.com (accessed 20 June 2011) offers educational material and a freely accessible dictionary.

18 For this phenomenon in the Trabzon variant of Turkish which goes back to lenition and devoicing processes in Turkic languages since Old Turkish see Brendemoen, B., The Turkish Dialects of Trabzon, I (Wiesbaden 2002) 201-11Google Scholar.

19 A similar palatalization of /s/ takes place in the Turkish dialect of the villages in the district of Sürmene. Instead of istemek ‘to want’ it is possible to hear [i∫te’mek].

20 See Drettas, Aspects, 66 for references.

21 Beşköy preserves an older pronunciation, which is also used by ‘Christian’ Pontic-speakers.

22 Mackridge, ‘Prolegomena’, 121.

23 Brendemoen, , Turkish, I, 74 Google Scholar: duşti for Standard Turkish düįtü or misilmanluk for Standard Turkish müslümanlık.

24 Ibid.

25 Mackridge, ‘Prolegomena’, 122.

26 Ibid., 128.

27 Ibid., 125; Drettas, Aspects, 250; Bortone, ‘Greek with no models’, 84.

28 Mackridge, ‘Prolegomena’, 127.

29 Note that the negative particle for the indicative /’ud∫/ (before vowel), /’u/ (before consonants of stressed syllables: /’u ‘θelo/ ‘I do not want’) or /u’d∫e/ (before consonants of unstressed syllables /’ud∫e ha ‘fdæo/ ‘I will not do’ ) is used in all Ophitic subdialects, whereas in Tonya /ghi/ is used instead, as in the Pontie spoken in Greece.

30 Mackridge, ‘Of’, 102-3.

31 The superscript n in /’ndoso/ and /ndo/ accounts for the prenasalization of /d/.

32 Ibid., 103.

33 According to Papadopoulos’ dictionary (s.v.) /γar’gon/ means ‘a young, ungelded ox’.

34 I am currently working on a complete grammar of the dialect of Beşköy.