Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/31

 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 9 the new Greek, but it appears more clearly and distinctly in it. It has been said that the firmness and the te- nacity of the character of the Greeks, who, more than any other subdued nation, remained true to their customs and habits, were the cause of their clinging to their language more than any other nation. But there exist other peoples with as much tenacity of character as the Greeks who also have preserved their customs and habits, who, however, did not preserve their language unchanged through all the centuries as did the Greeks. Greek of to-day is essentially old Attic Greek. By the Greeks the contempora- neous language of the different periods of Greece was never used instead of or confounded with the xncvTj^ any more than by the Romans during the fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian era would be used the Italian of their time, which was considered as being corrupt, instead of the classical Latin. At no time was there a contemporaneous general demotic language de- viating much from the xotvrj ; if such a language, deviating as much as, for instance, French from Latin, ever had existed, there would be quite a different Greek literary language at present. One of the most plausible reasons why the