to SMG, under the guidance of the "Committee for Demotic", chaired by Emmanouil Kriaras. Finally in 1982 the newly elected socialist government of Andreas Papandreou signed a presidential decree imposing the monotonic written accent system on education. This simplified scheme uses only two diacritical marks: the tonos ( ΄ ) to mark the stressed vowel, and the diaeresis ( ¨ ) which serves (as in English and French) to indicate separated vowel sounds. However this final change was not universally popular, and some (non-educational) writers and publishers still continue to use the traditional polytonic system, employing up to nine different diacritical marks, often with several in each word and sometimes up to three on the same vowel (for example ᾧ). The end of mandatory Katharevousa (and the consequent diglossia) was, however, welcomed by almost all. "When the reign of Katharevousa came to an end in 1976, many Greeks felt, in their everyday lives, a kind of linguistic liberation and a greater sense of personal and national self-respect at the realization that the language they had imbibed with their mothers' milk was not only something to be cherished but something to be proud of ..." (Mackridge 2009, p20) Writers, too, who had switched from Katharevousa to demotic in their work often reported "... a sense of liberation, a sense that at last they could express themselves freely, without the restrictions of a lexical and grammatical rigidity imposed from outside." But the effort spent on creating and promoting Katharevousa had not been entirely wasted. "With hindsight, we can see that the role of Katharevousa was to enrich the written (and to some extent the spoken) language of modern Greece. Yet it had clearly served its linguistic purpose and had begun to outlive its usefulness decades before it ceased to be the official language." (Mackridge 2009, Epilogue, p335) See also Demotic Greek Katharevousa German Wikipedia article on the Griechische Sprachfrage Contains much historical and other detail. Worth a look even for non-German speakers, as the names and notes give many leads for further research. Greek Wikipedia article on the Γλωσσικό ζήτημα Norwegian language conflict – a similar, ongoing dispute in Norway Notes References Further reading A short (2500 word) overview of the Greek Language Question, originally an article in the Paideia Supplement of the English-language Athens News. A very useful short introduction to the topic. A 12-page overview of the Greek Language Question,