This webpage was prepared by Professor Thomas J. Sienkewicz. If you have any questions, you can contact him at toms@monm.edu.

THE HELLENIC LANGUAGE IS IMMORTAL

The Grandeur of the Hellenic Language

I recalled the following speech that Prof. Xenophon Zolotas delivered at the International Monetary Fund meeting in September 1957, when he was President of the Bank of Greece:

"I always wished to address this Assembly in Greek, but realized that it would have been indeed 'Greek' to all present in this room. I found out, however, that I could make my address in Greek which would still be English to everybody. With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I shall do it now, using, with the exception of articles and prepositions, only Greek words.

Kyrie,

I eulogize the archons of the Panethnic Numismatic Thesaurus and the Oecumenical Trapeza for the orthodoxy of their axioms, methods and policies, although there is an episode of cacophonyof the Trapeza with Hellas.

With enthusiasm we dialogue and synagonize at the synods of our didymousorganizations in which polymorphous economic ideas and dogmas are analyzed and synthetized. Our critical problems such as the numismatic plethora generate some agony and melancholy. This phenomenon is characteristic of our epoch. But, to my thesis, we have the dynamism to program therapeutic practices as a prophylaxis from chaos and catastrophe.

In parallel, a panethnic unhypocritical economic synergy and harmonization in a democratic climate is basic:

I apologize for my eccentric monologue. I emphasize my eucharistia to you, Kyrie, to the eugenic and generous American Ethnos and to the organizers and protagonists of this Amphictony and the gastronomic symposia."

Two years later, in 1959, Mr. Zolotas gave another Hellenic-American speech, saying that he asked them to listen intently, even with the possible danger of tiring his listeners. Here is the speech:

"It is Zeus' anathema on our epoch for the dynamism of our economies and the heresy of our economic methods and policies that we should agonize between the Scylla of numismatic plethora and the Charybdis of economic anaemia.

"It is not my idiosyncracy to be ironic or sarcastic but my diagnosis would be that politicians are rather cryptoplethorists.

"Although they emphatically stigmatize numismatic plethora, they energize it through their tactics and practices.

"Our policies should be based more on economic and less on political criteria.

"Our gnomon has to be a metron between economic, strategic and philanthropic scopes. Political magic has always been anti-economic.

"In an epoch characterized by monopolies, oligopolies, monopolistic antagonism and polymorphous inelasticities, our policies have to be more orthological. But this should not be metamorphosed into plethorophobia which is endemic among academic economists.

"Numismatic symmetry should not antagonize economic acme.

"A greater harmonization between the practices of the economic and numismatic archonsis basic.

"Parallel to this, we have to synchronize and harmonize more and more our economic and numismatic policies pan-ethnically.

"These scopes are more practicable now, when the prognositcs of the political and economic barometer are halcyonic.

"The history of our didymous organizations in this sphere has been didactic and their gnostic practices will always be a tonic to the polyonymous and idiomorphous ethnical economies. The genesis of the programmed organization will dynamize these policies. Therefore, I sympathize, although not without criticism on one or two themes, with the apostlesand the hierarchy of our organizations in their zeal to program orthodox economic and numismatic policies.

"I apologize for having tyrannized you with my Hellenic phraseology.

"In my epilogue, I emphasize my eulogy to the philoxenous autochthons of this cosmopolitan metropolis and my encomium to you, Kyrie, and the stenographers."

"What better example can we show that any man who speaks Greek, speaks better English."

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