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Katharevousa (Greek: Καθαρεύουσα, IPA: [kaθaˈre̞vuˌsa]) is a form of the Greek language, created during the early 19th century by Adamantios Korais (1748-1833). A graduate of the university of Montpellier in 1788, Korais spent most of his life as an expatriate in Paris. Being a classical scholar, he was repelled by the Byzantine influence in Greek society and was a fierce critic of the ignorance of the clergy and their subservience to the Ottoman Empire. He held that education was a precursor to Greek liberation.

The “purified” Greek was to be the midpoint between Ancient Greek and Modern Greek. Katharevousa actually contained archaicised forms of modern words, purged of “non-Greek” vocabulary from other European languages and Turkish and a (simplified) archaic grammar.

The purpose of its creation was to mediate the struggle between the “archaists” and the “modernists”. One reason the Archaists preferred Ancient Greek was that Modern Greek includes Latin, Italian and Turkish loan words; and Greece then was a part of the Ottoman Empire. The name Katharevousa means more or less “clean one”, implying that it is a clean form of Greek, without foreign influences, maybe as it would hypothetically have evolved from Ancient Greek had there been no foreign influence.

In later years, Katharevousa was used only for official and formal purposes (such as politics, letters, official documents, and newscasting) while Dhimotiki, (δημοτική) ‘demotic’ or popular Greek, was the daily language. This creates a diglossic situation whereby most of the Greek population was excluded from the public sphere and advancing in education. However, in 1976 Dhimotiki was made the official language and by the end of the 20th century Katharevousa had become obsolete. Nevertheless, the ancient Greek grammar and syntactical rules that Katharevousa had adopted and many words from Katharevousa have influenced and entered Dhimotiki during the two centuries of its existence, so that the project has left a very noticeable trace in the modern Greek language, especially the written form.^{[citation needed]}

• Diglossia
• Linguistic purism