Voula Mastori

When Greek Meets English

2011-09-05T16:53:00.000+03:00

Diane Shugart

3eric t 8a kanw?

Greek teens use a form of Greeklish shorthand in text messages, but this language–a hybrid hieroglyphic and phonetic transliteration–is creeping into their day to day communications. Will this affect the Greek language?

Deciphering text messages from Greek teens, and now post-teens, is something like an alphabetic Sudoku puzzle. Sometimes it will take me several minutes to decipher what words like “8hmhcu” (θυμήσου, that is, remember) or strings of letter like c kla? (είσαι καλά, that is, how are you) mean. But my breaking point came with the query “t shoes teriazun” from my friend’s daughter seeking advice on what shoes to wear with a new pair of pants we’d bought together on one of our shopping sprees. Exasperated, I snapped back that if she expected any reply from me, from now she should write either in Greek or in English, not both, and certainly not in Greek with Latin characters. I got an emoticon of a smiley sticking out its tongue in response.
English words have been creeping into Greek usage so that words like “must” and “trendy”, “fake”, “concept” and “respect” pepper the speech of even television presenters and kafeneion patrons alike. “Celebrity”, “persona”, “wanna-be”, “business plan”, and even “logistics” have also passed into common usage, although it’s more often than not mis-usage. Such words also crop up in print and though often sometimes misspelled, they’re written in English rather than Greek. But this particular form of Greeklish is new.
The minutiae of transliteration has been fiercely debated by linguists for decades, and I’ve seen friendships come pushed to the brink by disputes over whether the Greek letter χ is properly rendered in English as “h”, “ch”, or “kh”. Arguments rage between proponents of orthographic transliteration and supporters of phonetic transliteration, the difference between plateia and platia. But this new form of transliteration is also partly hieroglyphic, with alphabetic and numeric characters used according to which most resembles the Greek, hence “8” for the letter θ and “h” for the letter η. And it’s an issue in which digital technologies have had a direct effect.
“So what’s wrong with it?” Mata, my friend’s teen daughter asked when we discussed how she writes. “It’s briefer. Fewer characters, so you can write a longer message.”
That’s teens’ rationale. But what about the long term impact on their generation’s use of the Greek language and, by extension, the language itself.
“I don’t think ‘hieroglyphic text messaging’ will lead to the disappearance of the Greek language as it seems more to be introducing another dimension globally and across languages to a kind of hyper-text that everyone uses,” says Adrianne Kalfopoulou, author, poet, and professor of literature and creative writing. She likens this form of Greeklish to short-hand symbols and stenography. “I think any native language/alphabet will continue to exist alongside these other kinds of codes.”
Voula Mastori, an award-winning author of books for pre-adolescents and young adults, says Greeklish will first have an impact on its users “who will never learn proper Greek spelling. Then, yes, I fear that if future generations slowly turn to Greeklish simply for their convenience, it will be disastrous for the Greek alphabet.”
It’s probably impossible to trace who or how the use of this form of Greeklish began, although it most likely emerged spontaneously and simultaneously across Greece and spread among friends. This is evident from the different “dialects”; some schools of this Greeklish routinely eliminate most nouns, sometimes reducing words to a single consonant. There are also differences in how the diphthong “ou” is rendered, by some in full and by others just by the letter “u”. Yet for the most part, the Greeklish alphabet is the same, especially when it comes to substituting numeric characters for Greek letters transliterated phonetically with more than one character, like 3 for ξ or ks.
“Visual symbols are just more appropriate to the visual mechanics of cell phones, iPads, netbooks, etc.,” Kalfopoulou says. “In more general terms, the visual has dominated, and will continue to dominate so much of contemporary culture, or any culture where ads, TVs, videos, play key roles in people’s daily lives.”
Mastori injects another element–rebellion. “I think they [use numeric characters] to set themselves apart from the previous generation. It’s their own way of communicating. This tendency for the new generation to want to differ from the older generation has always existed–and I think always will.”
Intermingling words from both languages is another way of differentiating themselves from the previous generation. “But honestly, I don’t understand why they use Latin characters. Maybe they’re bad spellers and are embarassed to show this, maybe they’re too lazy to switch language keyboards every time they use a foreign word–especially when they use foreign words frequently.”
The question of why Greek native speakers chose to write Greek words using a Latin alphabet intrigues Kalfopoulou, especially given the fact that all computer and cell phone keyboards support Greek. “I just think it’s the dominant alphabet, and perhaps just easier to access. More about how lazy people can be as opposed to “choice”. On Facebook, for example, to write in Greek characters I would have to change my settings for a few minutes...so it just seems easier to write ‘Greekenglish’, that is ‘Latin’ characters to express Greek words. So it’s sort of inevitable to the extent that people are inevitably convenience-oriented, and lazy about switching back and forth between languages and symbols.”
With younger generations adopting Greeklish, for whatever reasons, the Greek language may be taking another step in the simplification process. This, editor Silvi Rigopoulou notes, stealthily expanded, starting with the phonetic transliteration of foreign names, then foreign words, to now include some Greek words. Some Greeks consider each step as gnawing at the roots of Greek culture. Elena Akrita, a Greek journalist and writer known as a stickler for proper usage, was a lot less reserved in a recent article in the Athens daily Ta Nea responding to a proposal by a Cypriot member of the European Parliament to “modernize” the Greek language by, among other things, substituting the letter omikron for omega and abolishing the ending ς in favor of σ.
Yet digital technology may have pushed the Greek language a little closer to the total simplification advocated by the Cypriot politician. Kalfopoulou offers the use of stresses or accents as an example. A first round of simplification established a single symbol for this but some younger Greeks don’t even use that any more. “But when I teach poetry, for example, the Greek students have no problem understanding the role of stress patterns. So maybe simplification is inevitable, but that’s more about the culture of speed and convenience again, smaller spaces of time and also surface spaces (like netbooks, cell phones) to cram in the information, hence twittering our lives’ ‘headlines’.”
Language is the essence of culture. It’s the way we express thoughts and ideas. It’s not just words, but meanings, context, generations of experiences and history. Learning a language is the key to unlocking a culture.
“I think hypertexts and ‘cyber-texting’ is creating a kind of ‘imperialism of the simple’–not to say the ‘simple-minded’–because it reduces any complication to the quickest, pared-down code,” says Kalfopoulou. “On the other hand, it might also discipline us to ‘get to the point’, but ‘the point’ will only be suggestive, and up for anyone’s interpretation if we lose our ability to expand on those abbreviations.” Formal education is one way she sees to prevent this from happening: “the Greek language for Greeks, is at the heart of any education. So as long as there is education there will be language. And one hopes that there will always be access to education!”
Mastori is unequivocal. “Preserving the language is vital because it’s the people’s identity. I cannot imagine Greeks in the future requiring translation to read their own literature.”

http://www.odyssey.gr/features/articles~1687~greeklish~article#.TmRypwzq65g.facebook

We, writers, are lucky people

2011-08-07T11:00:00.000+03:00

We, writers, are lucky people. Even if we are not read by anyone, it is enough for us to write. A book is said to be a window for readers to the world, but firstly it is a window for the writer himself. It is a window through which he takes fresh air when his surrounding is suffocating. It is a window through which he escapes, when he is inprisoned in a situation. It is a magic window which travels him to places where he cannot and perhaps he will never be able to go either.

All children are miracles

2011-04-18T14:22:00.001+03:00

My each visit to a school or a library confirms my belief that children are miracles that await to be discovered - some of them dare to come up themselves. In any case, it is us, grown-ups, who are responsible either for the discovery of these hidden treasures or the encouragement of the disclosed ones.
Personally, when being a schoolchild, I was lucky with my essays, as no teacher ever intervened in my writing style and they always encouraged me in different ways. Only once, in the sixth grade of primary school, when I brought to the class a poem which, as I said, "someone on my mind dictated it to me", did I notice a strange smile trying to hide under my teacher's thick moustache. Although he asked me to read it to class, that strange smile haunted me and never did I bring a poem to there again.
Why do I recal all these? Because I happen to have in my hands two pieces of work that the 1st Gymnasium Lavrion teacher , Maria Mpereti, has sent me. The work belongs to her student, Iro Tsakidi, 2nd Grade, and it consits of a fairytale (4 paragraphs in all that manage to cancel death) and prose (just 1 paragraph incredibly too good for a child of her age). I am quoting the last sentence:
"But has anyone ever wondered if the world where we live is darker than the shadows we are afraid of? "

A baby bookworm!

2011-03-20T09:13:00.000+02:00

when being a Greek writer

2011-02-03T07:06:00.000+02:00

The fact that I live and work in Greece makes me a writer of the... outer space. My mother tongue does often work as an obstacle - or a safe barrier...

Christmas wishes

2010-12-19T14:44:00.000+02:00

I wish you all Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

2010-09-04T07:56:00.001+03:00

About the book "A tiny hand full of sirup"

“Ena gemato melia heraki” "A tiny hand full of honey"
Year of edition: 2001
Publisher: PATAKIS (Athens, Greece)
Illustrated by Spiros Goussis

State Honors, 1979

DESCRIPTION
When little Timos opened the door hasty and ready to make mischief again, he stayed with the lollipop in his mouth. Before him was his… grandpa! But how come? He knew his grandpa had gone up there in the sky! Might God have left him come down to earth again?

Behind the title "A tiny hand full of honey" ...

"In 1977 I happened to read in a daily newspaper:
"In a town of France an old single man died leaving his entire fortune in a little neighbor, because, as he wrote in his will, " ... the first day that we met he gave me his lollipop and this hand, full of honey, straight to my palm was what was most beautiful in my life."
"This little news, along with the fact that my father had recently died and my newborn son would never know him made me write "A hand full of honey"... I wrote it in one night staying up all night over my baby’s cradle, while he was crying incessantly, as if mourning the death of his grandfather ...
When manuscript, I took it to KEDROS (a little amazed publisher at the time) and handed it to the publisher herself, Nana Kalianesi, (yes, Nana had already "adopted" me as a writer), who put me to read it on the attic where her office was. When I finished reading, I saw her smiling happy. "We’ll publish it" she said. It was the fourth book I had written so far. Unknown yet. To have your book published at the time you had to wait in line. "When do you think it is to be published?" I asked timidly. "For such books, Voula, there’s no queue!" she answered with a broad smile and I took that response to be a bigger prize than those I had already taken for two stories of mine the previous year.

Here is the old edition

First edition 1978, Publisher KEDROS
Illustrator: Nina Stamatiou

2010-08-29T14:18:00.001+03:00

My good old very first book!!!

Title: My name's Alexis
Year of edition: 1975

Publisher: Papadopoulos.

Written for my son Alexios, who, for the record, is the reason I discovered my love for writing (the story is told in my book “How Mom became an author”, Publications PATAKIS, 2010).

I was lucky in my first steps as a writer. I found it relatively easy to have my first book published. There was a publisher who believed in me and, fortunately for me, he was justified (“My name’s Alexis” became a best-seller). Actually having a talent is not at all enough to make you a writer…

Scholars about the nomination of Voula Mastori for the 2008 Andersen Award

2010-08-20T18:34:00.000+03:00

Daring and art characterize Voula Mastori’s work, which is aimed at children and teenagers. Daring, because it deals with complex social subjects and situations relating to adolescence, such as divorce, sexual abuse, the physical and emotional upheavals girls experience in their teens and male homosexuality; and art, because it handles them with literary style and a wealth of narrative techniques (alternative view points, parallel narration, confessional writing, etc.) that render her texts excellent examples of this literary genre. By her original, and bold for Greek standards, projection and defence of female problems and situations, Voula Mastori has successfully established these social issues within children’s and teenage literature since 1991, with her book In High School.

Her literary style, ingenuity and child’s point of view also characterize her short stories for young children, as well as her knowledge books, accentuating the importance of these new literary genres in the area of children’s books.

I believe that Voula Mastori’s multifaceted -in terms of style, subjects and complex issues handled- literary work should deservedly compete for the Andersen Award and I wholeheartedly wish her to win, honoring Greek children’s literature both at the national and international levels.

Anastasia Katsiki – Givalou, Professor of Greek Literature,National & Kapodistrian University of Athens,Primary Education Faculty-Humanities Department

The selection of Voula Mastori to represent Greece for the 2008 Andersen Award is an excellent one since the writer, apart from her extensive and exceptional work, dares to speak to children about thorny matters such as mixed marriages and the self-identity problems faced by children born into them, multi-ethnic school classes and divorce. A tangible example of her talent and sensitivity is her book “The snowman’s taken mom”, in which, adopting first person narration, a small child recounts and comments on serious social issues in an absolutely truthful and convincing manner.

Angeliki Yannicopoulou, Associate Professor, Aegean University, Rhodes, Greece

I believe that Voula Mastori’s nomination for the 2008 Andersen Award is wholly justified and noteworthy, since, apart from being a prolific and highly successfully writer of both short stories for young children and fiction for teenagers and adults, her subjects and the way she handles them has always been on the cutting edge of contemporary Greek children’s literature as, for example, In High School (1991), in which she proves that writers can speak to children about everything (death, divorce, sexual abuse, erotic desire, female identity, etc), provided they avoid didactic lecturing and place their trust in their creative mythmaking and writing abilities.

Diamanti Anagnostopoulou, Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature,

University of the Aegean, Department of Preschool Education and Educational Design

In Voula Mastori’s writing, contemporary society is portrayed with boldness and sincerity, but also with a child’s fresh point of view. The stories of her young characters depict in miniature, but with particular precision, the history of her country and her time. With the wisdom of innocence, vital turning points in a child’s life are traced, like the first day at school or the parents’ divorce, along with broader phenomena that have a catalytic influence on the child, like immigration, multiculturality and the coexistence of people of different countries within a given school community or even within a family (The Snowman’s Taken Mum Away).

Her work also highlights the timeless and unsolvable mysteries of birth, death, and (lonely) life in the modern city (A Teeny Hand Dipped in Syrup).

The brave coming of age and the painful route to self-knowledge and knowledge of the outer world are subsumed in the penetrative mapping of a society that evolves, surpassing its wounds and facing new others. The low-key, purling writing of Voula Mastori succeeds in blending the individual with the collective, the naïve with the tragic, in a most natural, sensitive and powerful manner. I hope that she will be the one to bring the 2008 Andersen Award to Greece.

Alexandra Zervou, Professor, University of Crete

In the work of the prolific writer Voula Mastori, readers can discover many truths about human life and the problems of youth. Her powerful fiction transforms the human experience into a narrative of life that is versatile and bold. Her style and technique have been successfully tried in books for children of all ages, considerably advancing contemporary literature for children in our country. She is a gifted writer who handles her subjects with originality in both conception and narration. Tackling subjects such as racism, sexuality or the sensitive psychological issues of puberty, she has provided decisive answers, enriching her material with a variety of narrative techniques while offering us the delight of truth in literature. Without being didactic and with a clear intention to understand otherness, she defends the necessity of offering children the truth consistently and in a literary manner. I regard her nomination for the Andersen Award as a further recognition of the value of her work on a global level and I hope she receives it.

Georgia Kalogirou, Assistant professor, University of Athens

An element that characterizes Voula Mastori’s literary work is the originality of her topics. It would not be an exaggeration if one said that, like an oracle, she foresees the future issues that will be taken up by children’s literature. She was the first in her country who dared to write about otherness and corporal individuality even when addressing young children, which demands delicate and sensitive handling. Voula Mastori listens to the universal social gestalt and deftly reshapes it into literary axiom capable of inspiring demanding contemporary readers. She has been deservedly nominated for an award of this caliber, since she has been worthily serving the “global” literature for children and teenagers for over thirty years. I heartily wish her good luck!

Tasoula Tsilimeni, Assistant Professor, University of Thessaly

Newspapers: Giannitsa (19-20/5/07), Neos Paratiritis, Ixo tis Artas (,25/5/07) and more

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2010-08-14T19:02:00.011+03:00

An appreciative article
by
Meni Kanatsouli, professor of Children’s Literature at University of Athens

Voula Mastori will deservedly represent Greece

for Andersen Award 2008,

the most important award in children’s literature

Voula Mastori, in her books –both literary and educational ones– has a very strong asset for the child-reader: without boring him/her, she penetrates him/her with ideological thesis and aspects. Mastori does not admonish, neither does she declare; but in a very friendly manner, sometimes boldly and some other times with a smile, she speaks about the gender and culture otherness, death, family and interpersonal relations. She impresses with her experimentation together with both the thematic and narrative renewal of her stories, which is what applies to a gifted writer.

A first identifying point of Voula Mastori’s innovator writing genre is that she deftly impoverishes the borders between the literary styles and the identities of literary subjects. Mastori equilibrates boldly between genre categories which lead her to the creation of a new literary style.


"The Land with Two Cities and Almond-eye Cradles"

The Land with two Cities and almond-eye cradles (1977)* is a book which, while its subject is the conception and birth of a child, which could list it in a category of educational books, its approach to it is poetical, just because it was necessary to keep some of the magic about the mystery of life.


"At High School"

The fluidity game of genre classification passes to her novels, too. The most significant novel of hers, the In High School (1991), while it seems ethnographic with its walkabout in the life of a provincial Greek town about half a century ago, in reality it deals with matters which are deeply social and which concern the bias of the traditional society about genders, sex abuse, the dubious relation teenagers have with their body and sex identity. This book has a very advanced for Greek teenagers’ literature woman-centric view: Mastori dares to describe the girl the time she becomes a woman and watches in awe her bodily changes and men’s lust. Even more pioneer is the depiction of the male sex, a depiction which transpires a very advanced social sensibility. The sensitive boy here, the “sissy” for the others, passes through the modern ideological new classifications in literature for young readers concerning the gender identity: the traditional characteristics of genders have given ground to the personal individual identity of literary subjects.

"DolLina"

In dolLina, her latest novel, there is the contemporary family with the current problem of divorce and its dealing from the part of the two divorcing parents in a “modern” and “civil” way. But it is exactly here that Mastori does her innovator rupture. However a separation happens, children get hurt, they do not compromise with the changes in their life and in the life of their folks; they prefer a more definite separation. The composition of the child is described with sincerity; at the same time, though, it is his/her maturation which is described too; a procedure that is possible through reverse only.

This book –and this is the second identifying point of Mastori’s vanguard– is very modern in narrative style. The lingo of the contemporary youngsters saturates the dialogues and I imagine Mastori has been a very studious eavesdropper of them. The e-mail, chat rooms and messengers are another, too, very successful trick of hers so that to take in the contemporary reader with his/her own terms in literature reading.

"Under her Heart"

Mastori’s art is the narrative variety: Sometimes she follows the third person narration, sometimes the double narration –the first person in a diary in combination with the third person, as for example in In High School – and sometimes she focuses to one person through the diffractive picture of another person, as in Under her Heart (1995). But it is when the first person narrator is a pre-primary school child where she proves to be a master. It is difficult to combine in a text which claims to be literary the plausibility of the speech of a child-narrator with the ability this speech of his/her to satisfy literarily.

"The Snowman"s Taken Mum"

In The Snowman’s Taken Mum Away (1999), little Giannis, with disarming sincerity and irony, comments on the culture and social otherness in his kindergarten, on his parents’ divorce and their different mentality, as death in A teeny hand dipped in Syrup (1978).

"A Teeny Hand Dipped in Sirup"

Mastori –I wish her heartily to win the Andersen Award– constitutes tangible evidence that in order to write children’s books you need talent, sentiment, heart, but mainly you need to organize the plot and the narrative techniques studiously, to do rupture and peripeties and, the most important, to apprentice with children and books constantly.

KATHIMERINI (daily newspaper), Athens, February 2007

*in brackets the year of first edition