8th Conference of the Hellenic Society for Terminology

November 10th-12th, 2011
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens

The 8th Conference «Hellenic Language and Terminology» of the Hellenic Society for Terminology (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Eugenides Foundation from 10 until 12 November 2011) was dedicated to M. Triandaphyllidis. Keynote speaker: G. Papanastassiou, Director of the Institute of Modern Greek Studies, «Manolis Triandaphyllidis, Xenilasia or isoteleia, one hundred years later».

 

“We will discuss foreign words, which very often appear in spoken discourse, some of them redundant, others necessary, and which, let’s hope, will not cease to visit us in the future along with culture”, M. Triandaphyllidis writes in the Introduction to his work Xenelasia or isoteleia: A study on the loans of Modern Greek.

In this book, M. Triandaphyllidis discusses, among other things, the usefulness and necessity of loans, the universality of the phenomenon of lexical borrowing and the pointlessness of the efforts made by the proponents of Katharevousa to eliminate loans from the Greek language, aiming in effect not only at loans, but also at the folk words of the vernacular. In his speech, Professor Papanastassiou related the phenomenon known as Xenelasia in Greek, which was characteristic of Katharevousa, to contemporary anti-scientific notions according to which loans spoil the Greek language.

Welcome address speeches were delivered, among others, by the rector of the University of Athens, Professor Th. Pelegrinis, the chairman of the Hellenic Society for Terminology Mr. K. Valeondis, and the chairman of the Scientific Committee, Professor P. Kondos.