GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 245 of the inhabitants of the cities as well as of the peasantry, is by no means a barbarian mixture, but rather a genuine Greek. Everybody ac- quainted with this language is aware of this fact. I cite as witness thereof: Ernst Curtius, a first- class expert in both forms of the Greek lan- guage, who says in his work, "The New Greek and its Meaning with Regard to the Old Greek," that, excepting a few tracts at the border of the territory where Greek is spoken (as, for instance, the Ionian Isles), " even the lowest Greek uses a pure Greek language." The question of the physical descent of the new Greeks, which cannot be separated from that of the language, is best settled by answer- ing that of the descent of the language. Ac- cording to late researches, a Slavonic descent of the Greeks can no longer be maintained. Proof can be furnished that not only are the modern Greeks not Slavonic, but also that no trace of a Slavonic influence can be found, with one excep- tion to be mentioned presently. A colleague, who had studied Greek and was also a college graduate, claimed, while convers- ing with me, that the modern Greek and Sla- vonic languages were very much intermingled. A Greek gentleman, a scholar, on hearing this
