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Message:: [QUOTE="Voulgaroktonou, post: 3014386, member: 84047"]Keep using that subjunctive, Doug - I do! If I am feeling particularly ornery, I sometimes use 15th c. English words and expressions, just to keep people wondering about me...In modern Greek, the language change was sometimes violent. The spoken language, Demotike had always been there, of course developing as does any spoken language; along with it went Katharevousa, literally, "purified", an artificial, "high" language that sought to preserve Classical Greek. Katharevousa was the literary language, Demotike, the spoken. An older Greek friend of mine referred to it as "gutter" language! When the Bible was initially translated into Demotike , in the early years of the 20th c., I recall, there was rioting in Athens, that it would be translated into "low" Greek. I read the Bible in modern Demotike, and it is remarkably similar to that of Koine Greek. But I miss also those expressive, but more complicated constructions found in Classical Greek.[/QUOTE]