WEBVTT 

00:01.000 --> 00:05.000
I grew up with the language that my parents spoke at home

00:06.000 --> 00:15.000
and at school we used modern Greek. And I have to

00:16.000 --> 00:22.000
say that I was born in a village with a population of about 500 people. In school

00:23.000 --> 00:27.000
there were about 100 children from the first grade up to the sixth grade. And the children

00:28.000 --> 00:35.000
there spoke two kinds of languages. First of all my language, which we spoke as part of

00:36.000 --> 00:41.000
the population in this village. These were all refugees from the Black

00:42.000 --> 00:51.000
Sea. This people was called Pontians. Their name stems

00:52.000 --> 00:59.000
from the area they are from, the Black Sea, from Pontus. And so the language was called

01:00.000 --> 01:06.000
the Pontic language. This language was spoken in this village and not

01:07.000 --> 01:12.000
only in this village but even in other cities where these people lived

01:13.000 --> 01:17.000
because they were refugees from the Black Sea. At school

01:18.000 --> 01:22.000
we had to use modern Greek. We had a

01:23.000 --> 01:28.000
a teacher who was responsible for all six grades, so from the first

01:29.000 --> 01:37.000
up to the sixth. That was the school system back then. Just to give you an impression

01:38.000 --> 01:46.000
of how it was at that time: as soon as the bell rang we had a break and in the schoolyard

01:47.000 --> 01:52.000
we used our mother tongue. For us

01:53.000 --> 01:59.000
the mother tongue was a foreign language compared to modern Greek.

02:00.000 --> 02:06.000
That's why the teacher back then recommended that we use then this new language when we spoke to each other. 

02:07.000 --> 02:12.000
And so the school has started for me. However, I should 

02:13.000 --> 02:20.000
say that I started school in 1951.

02:21.000 --> 02:27.000
And the country wasn't like that properly organized. There was the Second World War

02:28.000 --> 02:32.000
and all this was not the way it was supposed to be. We only had one teacher

02:33.000 --> 02:38.000
in this village. During these school years, we quickly

02:39.000 --> 02:47.000
learned (modern Greek) and at the same time at home we used our mother tongue,

02:48.000 --> 02:52.000
the Pontic language. I must add that, even today,

02:53.000 --> 02:58.000
when I meet the people from back then whether these are my siblings

02:59.000 --> 03:04.000
or my uncle, we still use this mother tongue of back then.

03:05.000 --> 03:10.000
However, I have children today and I am in another country.

03:11.000 --> 03:17.000
My children and I did not continue to speak this mother language

03:18.000 --> 03:25.000
because modern Greek was very important for us and my children have

03:26.000 --> 03:30.000
modern greek as their mother tongue.