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Greeklish (or Grenglish or Latinoellinika or
Frankolevantinika) is Greek language written with the
Latin alphabet ('English'). It is an example of transliteration.
Introduction
Greeklish is commonly used on the Internet when Greek people communicate by email,
IRC or other means.
History
In the past it was difficult to make computers recognize Greek characters, because not all operating systems or applications
had support for Greek. Today, because modern software supports a lot of languages including Greek, it is much easier for Greeks
to communicate in their mother tongue, Modern Greek, over the Internet. However a lot of people still use Greeklish, maybe because it is faster
to type and they do not have to worry about orthography and grammar.
It is reported by some people that the first modern usage of Greeklish appeared in EMY (Ethniki Meteorologiki Ypiresia), the national
meteorological service of Greece, several decades ago and certainly before the Internet.
Orthographic & Phonetic Greeklish
Greeklish may be orthographic
or phonetic.
Lack of Standard
There are many ways to write Greeklish. As there is no commonly accepted method of transcribing Greek characters into Latin
ones between the Greek Internet users, everyone uses their own way.
ELOT, The Greece's Standards Organization,
have proposed a standard transliteration, used by the British
Council, but not by the general public.
Books written in Greeklish
Giannis Androutsopoulos (see References) talks about "Exegesis", a book written in Greeklish of roughly 200 pages. It
was a novel about lovers who communicate through the Internet. The book was about to be published by Oxy Publications, as Mr.
Androutsopoulos describes. The Greeklish transliteration of Exegesis, which used the ISO 8432 transliteration
standard, was based on the Greek translation of the original book.
Web Sites written in Greeklish
Most personal or informal web sites were written in Greeklish in the past. Today this is not the case, as the use of Greeklish
on a web site is considered inappropriate. However there are still many Greek web sites which utilize Greeklish.
Greek Companies which use Greeklish
Some Internet Service Providers in Greece use
both Greek and Greeklish in their emails. For example, the corporate announcements sent
to users via email are usually written in English, Greek, and Greeklish.
Use in Business Communication
Use of English for business purposes or business communication is considered as a lack of business ability or respect, by
some.
Current trends
As of 2004, a hostile movement against Greeklish appeared in many Greek online Web
discussion boards (fora) where Greeklish was the primary "language" of communication. Administrators often ban users who continue
using Greeklish, making the use of Greek mandatory. Examples include the Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network Forum and the ADSLgr.com Forum.
On Greek IRC, only Greeklish is used (as of 2004).
It is considered by many that Greeklish is dangerous for the cultural integrity of the Greek language.
However, others disagree and support Greeklish. Some university professors have proposed the official use of the Latin
alphabet in the Greek language for the sake of its modernization.
Examples
- Greek: Καλημέρα, πως είσαστε;
(goodmorning, how are you?)
- Greeklish 1: kalimera, pos isaste?
- Greeklish 2: kalhmera, pws eisaste?
- Greeklish 3: kalhm3ra, pws eisast3?
- Typing as if the keyboard layout were set to Greek, when it is actually set to US English: Kalhm;era, pvw
e;isasteq
- Greek: Θήτα (theta)
- Greeklish 1: thita
- Greeklish 2: 8hta
- Greeklish 3: uita
- Typing as if the keyboard layout were set to Greek, when it is actually set to US English: U;hta
As you can see, it is very common to use the number 8 for the letter Θ/θ (theta), or the letter u (probably because
u and theta are on the same key on the Greek computer keyboards) or the combination th. For the letter E/ε (epsilon) usually
Greeks use the English letter e or the number 3 (which looks like an epsilon inverted). But most commonly 3 is used for the
letter Ξ/ξ (ksi) (because of the visual resemblance).
References
Apo ta fragoxiotika sta greeklish ("Από τα
φραγκοχιώτικα στα greeklish") - Published
September 5, 1999 on a major Greek
newspaper (TO VIMA Tis Kyriakis, ΤΟ ΒΗΜΑ Της
Κυριακής) by Giannis Androutsopoulos (Γιάννης
Ανδρουτσόπουλος), a linguist researcher at the
University of Heidelberg: Discusses the historical
usage of the Latin alphabet for writing Greek, giving references even from 1930's. The article is available online in this page
(greek language): http://tovima.dolnet.gr/demo/owa/tobhma.print_unique?e=B&f=12688&m=B03&aa=1
. It was published on researcher's personal
pages at Heidelberg some years before and so can be found via the Internet Archive.
Greeklish-to-Greek Conversion
Since the appearance of Greeklish there have been numerous attempts to develop applications for automatic conversion from
Greeklish to Greek. Most of them can cope with only some of Greeklish transliteration patterns and can be found and downloaded in
the Internet. The first complete system for automatic transcription of Greeklish into Greek, obtaining correct spelling is
All Greek to Me!
, developed and provided by Institute for Language and Speech Processing
External link
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