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On the occasion of the discussion about the “danger” that our language runs through the use of foreign terms such as “click away”, many remembered Xenophon Zolotas, president of the Ecumenical Government of 1989 and governor of the Bank of Greece for his historic speech in en the context of the annual meetings of the World Bank.
The famous speech that took place on September 26, 1957 in English but using only Greek words has not been forgotten to this day. The SKAI report contains documents not only of the description made by Zolotas but also of the interview granted by Gerasimos Christatos, the only Greek who was interviewed in 1993.
The background behind the speech is quite interesting, as Christatos reveals. Professor Zolotas was the Permanent Representative of Greece to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, where the meetings were conducted in English only. As described by Mr. Christatos, in 1957 the Brazilian representative chose to speak in portuguese with the result that none of the attendees understood.
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So when the meeting ended, the then president of the International Bank, Eugene Black, came up to me and said, “I don’t think it’s time to get up and speak Greek to each other, Mr. Zolotas.” He said this, because in English it is said, when you speak and nobody understands, ‘everything is Greek to me.’Xenophon himself used to say Zolotas in a characteristic way at that time.
As Christatos describes: The following year, while traveling, he thought about Mr. Black’s joke and said, “Can I tell you this?” It started as follows: “Today he says that I will speak Greek to you, but that everyone will understand.”
The text of Xenophon Zolotas’s speech:
«Kyrie, praise the archons of the Panethnic Numismatic Thesaurus and the Ecumenical Trapeze for the orthodoxy of their methods and policies of axioms, although there is an episode of Trapeze cacophony with Hellas. We enthusiastically dialogue and synagonize in the synods of our Didymias Organizations in which polymorphic economic ideas and dogmas are analyzed and synthesized. Our critical problems like the numismatic plethora generate some agony and melancholy. This phenomenon is characteristic of our time. But, for my thesis we have the dynamism to program therapeutic practices as prophylaxis of chaos and catastrophe. At the same time, a pandemic and little hypocritical economic synergy and harmonization in a democratic climate is essential. I apologize for my eccentric monologue. I highlight my Eucharist to your Kyrie to the eugenic and generous Ethnos Americana and to the organizers and protagonists of this Ampitctyony and of the gastronomic symposia ».
“He spoke to them in English / Greek and everyone understood that they understood Greek, that was the most important thing,” Christatos told SKAI.
Xenophon Zolotas, describing the reactions to his speech, said: “All the words are of Greek origin. The world is ruined. They stood up like crazy and clapped, clapped. The Washington Post and foreign newspapers, the French, etc. They mentioned this reason, it made a great impression.”
Such was the impression that Xenophon Zolotas was asked to speak English-Greek again at the 1959 meeting.
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The text of the second speech is as follows:
Kyrie, is the anathema of Zeus in our time for the dynamism of our economies and the heresy of our methods and economic policies that we must agonize the Scylla of numismatic plethora and the Charybdis of economic anemia. It is not my idiosyncrasy to be ironic or sarcastic, but my diagnosis would be that politicians are more of a cryptopletor. Although they emphatically stigmatize the numismatic plethora, they energize it through their tactics and practices. Our policies should be based more on economic and less political criteria. Our gnomon has to be a metron between the political, strategic and philanthropic realms. Political magic has always been uneconomic. In an age characterized by monopolies, oligopolies, monophonies, monopoly antagonisms, and polymorphous inelasticities, our policies have to be more orthological. But this should not metamorphose into pletorophobia, which is endemic among academic economists. Numismatic symmetry should not hyper-antagonize the economic boom. Greater harmonization between the practices of the economic and numismatic archons is essential. At the same time, we have to increasingly synchronize and harmonize our economic and numismatic policies in a panic way. These scopes are more practicable now, when the forecasts of the political and economic barometer are stark. The history of our didymus organizations in this area has been didactic and their gnostic practices will always be a tonic for the polonymous and idiomorphic ethnic economies. The genesis of the programmed organization will energize these policies. For this reason, I sympathize, not without criticism on one or two issues, with the apostles and the hierarchy of our organs in their eagerness to program orthodox economic and numismatic policies, although I have a certain logomachy with them. I apologize for tyrannizing you with my Hellenic phraseology. In my epilogue, I emphasize my praise for the native Philoxeans of this cosmopolitan metropolis and my praise for you, Kyrie, and the stenographers.
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