Recreating the Voices of the 19th Century: A Journey Through Time and Sound

From the Athens of Otto to the Athens of Miltos Karellis

Everything began with the initial evaluation of the project’s scenarios. One of the main comments from users was: “But people didn’t speak like that back then!”. Absolutely right. But how did they speak? The question needed to be explored with the help of a linguistic expert. Meanwhile, the entire Athens experience had to be redesigned, a unified story with main and secondary characters, with a beginning, middle, and end was created, and Miltos Karellis was born. A 15-year-old from Roumeli who, in 1854, becomes an internal migrant. He settles in Athens, where he initially works as a shoe shiner. Over time, being the smart and capable young man he is—and with the help of a “good” marriage—he progresses. He starts a family, owns his own shop, and lives happily until his daughter’s marriage “stumbles” over the social barriers of the time. A fictional story that captures the typical problems and opportunities for social mobility in the 19th century.

How to spell “fotapsies” (lighting)

Thus, the story of Miltos Karellis was created, a story that through guided dialogue would give users the opportunity to discuss Miltos’s personality and values, and more broadly, the customs of the era and their relevance today. At the same time, the experience was enriched with autonomous “Soundscapes”, featuring dozens of characters, from Queen Amalia and botany professor Theodoros Orphanidis to anonymous washerwomen by the Ilissos River. Meanwhile, the team began collaborating with linguistics professor Nikos Pantelidis from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, who took on the task of “aging” the script texts. His contribution was truly invaluable. Depending on their social status, the heroines and heroes of the Athens script “renounced” modern Greek and rediscovered their own dialects: Katharevousa (a conservative form of the Modern Greek language conceived in the late 18th century as both a literary language and a compromise between Ancient Greek and the contemporary vernacular, Demotic Greek), the old Athenian dialect, the local dialect of Roumeli, and also Katharevousa with a German accent for Queen Amalia!

Local dialect of Xanthi, Ladino, Turkish, Pomak, and Armenian

A similar approach was taken to the Xanthi script. Here, in addition to Katharevousa and the Xanthi dialect, the texts were translated into Ladino, Turkish, Pomak, and Armenian. The aim, as in Athens, was to provide the experience with as much realism and authenticity as possible, and to highlight the dominant characteristic of Xanthi’s society at the time: multiculturalism. And, as in Athens, the texts completely changed regarding their form and sound.

Recording Voices Long Forgotten

… All this on paper. The first “obstacle”, the transformation of the texts, had been overcome. A second, larger “obstacle” remained: their phonetic rendering. The “operation” was carried out at the production company Rabbeats in June. The actors, among them the famous Turk Cem Yiğit Üzümoğlu, went above and beyond to interpret the texts in languages that are no longer spoken, with the help of our linguist. Suddenly, the studio was filled with voices that had not been heard for decades. As Professor N. Pantelidis emphasized, there is insufficient data, especially regarding the old Athenian dialect and generally the way residents of Attica, both natives and internal migrants, spoke in the early 19th century. Nevertheless, the texts meticulously applied the limited knowledge we have of the period, resulting in a groundbreaking attempt to record reproductions of long-forgotten dialects!

In conclusion, the endeavor to linguistically capture the past proved to be a long, tumultuous, but also fascinating journey! This was confirmed by almost all the actors who participated in the recording, who, despite the difficulties in recording the texts, stated that it is one of the most interesting projects they have been involved in so far!