It is said that thought goes along with language and one cannot develop the one without developing the other. In my view, learning a new language is above all learning a different way of thinking, a different way to perceive the world. It is a skill that not only enforces our understanding of our mother tongue, but is also the access point to a new culture, a new modus operandi.
In this sense, Modern Greek, the birthplace of terms and notions such as democracy, ethics, economy, politics, history, theory, practice, philosophy, theater and drama can be of unique value. It is a language through which we can take a peek at the very foundations of some of the western world’s long-standing values. It is about glancing at our very own core.
Despite of being spoken by few, its presence in other European languages, including English, is far from insignificant. The speech below, delivered by the prominent Greek economist Xenophon Zolotas, is an outstanding manifestation of this language’s universal character. It is a speech aimed at being understandable by both native English and Greek speakers, as almost all nouns, verbs and adjectives are direct or indirect borrowings from Greek.
It is Zeus’ anathema on our epoch for the dynamism of our economies and the heresy of our economic methods and policies that we should agonize between the Scylla of numismatic plethora and the Charybdis of economic anemia.
It is not my idiosyncrasy to be ironic or sarcastic but my diagnosis would be that politicians are rather cryptoplethoristic. Although they emphatically stigmatize numismatic plethora, energize it through their tactics and practices.
Our policies have to be based more on economic and less on political criteria. Our gnomon has to be a metron between political, strategic and philanthropic scopes. Political magic has always been antieconomic.
In our epoch characterized by monopolies, oligopolies, monopsonies, monopolistic antagonism and polymorphous inelasticities, our policies have to be more orthological. But this should not be metamorphosed into plethorophobia, which is endemic among academic economists.
Numismatic symmetry should not antagonize economic acme.
A greater harmonization between the practices of the economic and numismatic archons is basic. Parallel to this, we have to synchronize and harmonize more and more our economic and numismatic policies panethnically.
These scopes are more practical now, when the prognostics of the political and economic barometer are halcyonic.
The history of our didymous organizations in the sphere has been didactic and their Gnostic practices will always be a tonic to the polyonymous and idiomorphous ethnical economics. The genesis of the programmed organizations will dynamize these policies. I sympathize, therefore, with the apostles and the hierarchy of our organizations in their zeal to program orthodox economic and numismatic policies, although I have some logomachy with them.
I apologize for having tyrannized you with my Hellenic phraseology.
In my epilogue, I emphasize my eulogy to the philoxenous autochthons of this cosmopolitan metropolis and my encomium to you, Kyrie, and the stenographers.
For a native English speaker, Modern Greek is not the easiest language to learn. Still, during the tutoring process the learner will be excited to discover and understand hundreds of Greek terms used in modern English, many of which are considered to be hard to grasp in the fields of medicine, humanities and the natural sciences. The key point to this is “etymology”, in other words, the origins of a term, its evolution through time. If one loves the magic world of words and meanings, there is no better field than Modern Greek to dive into the foundations of language formation according to a mathematically organized system of vocabulary and derivatives rigidly fixed in roots; etymology. As soon as someone really understands how etymology works, no language learning will ever be that hard again.
The link below provides useful material and resources on Greek language:
http://www.greek-language.org
