Greeklish

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The suitcase word Greeklish (also Greek Γκρίκλις Griklis , from English Greek 'Greek' and English 'English') is used to describe the Latin transcription or transliteration of Greek in Internet and mobile phone communication. The term also includes the associated network jargon , i.e. the linguistic peculiarities of this form of communication. Other names for the Greeklish are Engl. Grenglish and ASCII Greek as well as Greek Latinoellinika (Λατινοελληνικά, Latin Greek ') and Frangolevandinica (Φραγκολεβαντίνικα, actually 'Franco-Evantine', for example in the sense of 'west-east').

Greeklish is commonly used on the Internet for Greek-language communication via e-mail , IRC and instant messaging, as well as for SMS traffic with mobile phones.

history

The term Frangolevandinika actually referred to the use of the Latin script from the early modern period for Greek in the area of ​​the Venetian, Catholic dominion over some parts of Greece. The word frangos (φράγκος 'Franconian') is a synonym for 'Western European' in Greek and, in the narrower sense, for 'Roman Catholic', the Republic of Venice referred to its possessions in the eastern Mediterranean as Levant . This followed a general tendency to use scriptures according to the religious denomination, such as the Greek and Arabic for Albanian depending on the Orthodox or Islamic faith or the Greek for the Turkish of the Karamanlı . Some early modern Greek literature is in manuscripts in Latin (such as the comedy Fortounatos by Markos Antonios Foskolos , 1655). In the 19th century, Greek written in Latin was also referred to as frangochiotika (φραγκοχιώτικα 'Francochiotisch', after the Catholic mission in the Aegean from Chios ) or as frangovlachika (φραγκοβλάχικα 'Frankowalachian', after the Romance-speaking Wallachians ).

In the context of the discussion about a (never carried out) Greek orthography reform according to phonetic principles to combat the "plague of illiteracy ", some authors suggested the Latin script around 1930 for Greek, which would avoid confusion with the previously valid ancient Greek orthography, costs in of literary production and, last but not least, should symbolically manifest an alignment with Western civilization. Counter-arguments that feared a loss of the cultural identity of Greek were countered by referring to the successful conversion from Turkish to Latin . After the Second World War, Latinized Greek was used sparingly, in international telegrams and in banking, allegedly also in the Greek National Weather Service ( Ethniki Meteorologiki Ypiresia , ΕΜΥ).

With the advent of private computers in the 1960s, which only had 7-bit ASCII English fonts to represent English, the Greeklish was practically reinvented. In the early Internet of the 1980s, the Greeklish used to represent Greek became more widespread and quickly became very popular in the 1990s. After most applications in the computer sector supported the Greek script by means of Unicode at the end of the century , however, due to the easy and quick applicability and the largely negligible orthography, it remained and developed into a kind of Greek network jargon .

It has been the subject of public discussion in Greece since the Greeklish continued to spread on the Internet. In 1996 the headline of the typography magazine acro was: “Etsi tha grafetai i glossa mas apo do ke bros?” (“Will we write our language like this from now on ?”). In January 2001 the Academy of Athens published an open letter warning against the replacement of the Greek with the Latin alphabet:

"Θεωρούμε ανόσια αλλά και ανόητη κάθε προσπάθεια να αντικατασταθή η ελληνική γραφή στο λίκνο τς. (...) Όπως και επί Ενετών, όταν αυτοί στα μέρη που κυριαρχούσαν προσπάθησαν να αντικαταστήσουν στα ελληνικά κείμενα τους ελληνικούς χαρακτήρες, έτσι και τώρα θα αντισταθούμε, καλώντας όλους τους συνέλληνες να αντιδράσουν για την πρόρριζα εξαφάνιση των ανίερων αυτών σχεδίων. "
“We consider any attempt to replace the Greek script in its country of origin with another not only disrespectful, but also senseless. (…) Just like back then, when the Venetians tried to replace the Greek characters in the Greek texts [with Latin] wherever they ruled, we will defend ourselves now by calling on all fellow Greeks to support the radical Disappearance of these unholy plans to enter. "

This letter sparked a lively debate in the Greek newspaper landscape, between almost phobic standpoints against a Latinization of Greek and opinions that illuminated the Greeklish with a positive attitude to technological progress and in some cases even established a new language variety of modern Greek. Some combined this Greek-friendly tendency with a general criticism of globalization . Some researchers saw this debate as a reminiscence of the controversy over the Greek language question , since the arguments against the Greeklish were reminiscent of those of the Katharevousa proponents, who were reminiscent of the arguments of the Dimotiki supporters.

Transcription Schemes

There are no fixed or uniform rules for the font used. For the word διεύθυνση ( diefthynsi 'address') 23 different forms of transcription were found. The Greek theta (θ), which reproduces the sound [θ], which corresponds to the English unvoiced th , was found in 62.9% of cases by th , in 22.9% by the number 8 , in 5 , 7% represented by the zero (0) , and in 2.9% with Q or q , in 5.6% of the cases other characters were chosen. The Greek accent marks are usually not transmitted. Through the regular use of certain characters, real Greeklish styles can develop, which even create identity for the groups using them.

Essentially, three principles or their combination are used to render Greek with Latin characters:

  • Phonetic transcription : Regardless of the Greek orthography, Greek is transcribed according to the sounds. The vowel signs a, e, i, o, and u more or less correspond to the vowels as they are in German or Romance languages, the consonants more like their sound in English. Mixed transcription based on partially phonetic principles is the most commonly used.
  • Visual transliteration : Each Greek letter corresponds to a character on the Latin keyboard. The Latin letters (or numerals) are used because of their graphic similarity to the corresponding Greek letters. A clear transfer back into the Greek script is possible. There are also visual implementations for capital letters , such as a double capital T (TT) or the number 5 for the large pi (Π).
  • Use of letters according to the Greek keyboard layout : The letters are entered as if typing Greek on the computer. The acute (through;) is often also reproduced (with a real English keyboard layout ). This variant occurs relatively rarely.
Greek alphabet α β γ δ ε ζ η θ ι κ λ μ ν ξ ο π ρ σ τ υ φ χ ψ ω ´ ει ευ ου ς
phonetic transcription a v gh / y d e z i th i k l m n ks
x 		O p r s t i f kh / h / ch ps O i ef / ev u s
visual transliteration a b G d e z n
h 		8 9 0
Q q 		i k l m v 3 O p
n 		r
p 		s
c 		t u
y 		f x 4th w egg eu
ey 		ou
oy 		s
Keyboard transliteration a b G d e z H u i k l m n j O p r s t y f x c v ; egg ey oy w

Extreme examples have also been documented for visual transliteration, which aim to approximate the typeface to its Greek appearance as closely as possible. One user used a transliteration scheme that he called “to pio prosegmevo kai omorfo optiko pou exw dei” (“the most cautious and optically most beautiful standard I have ever seen”). With the c, she uses a character that is similar to the variant ϲ of the sigma from the Greek uncial :

As npoc8ecw ki egw oti ta teleutaia duo xrovia nou ekava Xrictougevva cthv Qeccalovikh ta mova naidia
Ας προσθέσω κι εγώ ότι τα τελευταία δύο χρόνια που έκανα Χριστούγεννα στην Θεσσαλονίκη τα μόνα παιδιά
nou hp8av va mas nouv ta kallavta htav npocfugonoula, kopitcia cuvh8ws, ano thv Gewpgia.
που ήρθαν να μας πουν τα κάλλαντα ήταν προσφυγόπουλα, κορίτσια συνήθως, από την Γεωργία.
"May I also add that for the last two years when I spent Christmas in Thessaloniki, the only children
who came to sing Christmas carols to us were refugee children, mostly girls, from Georgia?"

Text example

Loipon, ante gia na xanazwntanepsoume to post ....
Egw o Fulljazz kai o Sekos eimaste Tei Athinas, tmhma Texnologias Iatrikwn organwn. Me ton CyberAngel vrethikame kai ta eipame ...
ANTE KAI OI IPOLOIPOI NA MAZEYTOUME REEEEIIIIIIIIII
"So come on, let's
breathe new life into the thread .... Me Fulljazz and Sekos, we are Athens University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Medical Devices. We met with CyberAngel and talked ...
LET'S GO TO THE OTHERS, LET'S COLLECT, LEUTEEEEEEE "

use

In the 1990s, many private homepages were designed in Greeklish - most HTML editors did not support the Greek character set. They are rather the exception today. Some Internet providers in Greek-speaking countries offer templates for e-mail traffic in Greek and Greeklish, which they use in addition to English for their own e-mail messages to customers. In the Greek-speaking area of IRC and instant messaging , Greeklish is used almost exclusively today. It is largely out of use for longer or more formal texts. In the field of business news, the use of the Greeklish is considered inappropriate.

Around 2004 a discussion began in Greek internet forums, for example at translatum and AWNM , against the use of Greeklish and for the establishment of Greek as mandatory, administrators occasionally threatened users who used Greeklish with blocking. The main argument against the Greeklish was that the typeface was perceived as ugly and that it was more difficult to read compared to the Greek script. As a counter-argument it was put forward that users in the Greek diaspora , especially at universities or in Internet cafés, have to use computers that do not support Greek writing. The technical possibilities have improved in the last few years, but in the meantime Greeklish has established itself as "chic" in some circles. a. because it is quicker to enter and the Greek orthography can be neglected.

Widespread, for example on a mailing list from www.greece.org, is the self-deprecating use of English sentences, which are first transcribed back into Greek and then into Greeklish. Example: “this is hard to read” becomes Greeklish “dis iz xnung tou rint” (“that is difficult to read”) via δις ιζ χαρντ του ριντ.

Through the Greek translation of the novel Hello, Alice (original title Exegesis ) by Astro Teller , which consists exclusively of e-mail messages and was reproduced in the Greek translation in Greeklish, the written form became literary.

Network jargon

Another trend in Greeklish is the emergence of a kind of Greek net jargon with the typical abbreviations and joking "misspellings" or "wrong" forms. Examples:

Greeklish meaning
tsagia 'Bye', actually τσάγια ('teas'), joking “plural form” of ciao
Re c re sy, colloquially 'Hey, dude!' 'Hey man!'
kalimerez, merez Kalimeres, joking "plural form" for kalimera (καλη) μέρα ('Good day'), analogous to the English. byez
tpt tipota (τίποτα 'nothing' 'no cause')
dn den (δεν 'not')
m mou , (μου 'me' 'my')
s sou , (σου 'dir' 'your')

Cypriot variant

In the area of Cypriot Greek , which is not a literary language, there are variants of Greeklish that reflect the sound level of this Greek dialect . The Greek sound [ kʲ ], which is [ dʒ ] in Cyprus, is reproduced phonetically as j , in transliteration also as tzi (from Greek τζι-). Following this, the abbreviation j stands for the Greek word for 'and' (και, in Cypriot pronunciation [ dʒɛ ]). n stands for the standard Greek den (δεν [ ðɛn ] 'not'), which in Cyprus is en εν.

Comparable language and written forms

Other languages ​​that are written with non-Latin scripts have also developed Internet versions with the letters of the Latin alphabet, examples of which are “ASCII-ized Arabic ”, and various uses on the Internet of pinyin for Chinese .

literature

  • Jannis Androutsopoulos (Γιάννης Ανδρουτσόπουλος): 'Greeklish': Transliteration practice and discourse of computer-mediated digraphia . (PDF; 318 kB) 2006
  • The same: Από dieuthinsi σε diey8ynsh. Ορθογραφική ποικιλότητα στην λατινική μεταφραφή των Ελληνικών. In: Ελληνική Γλωσσολογία '99. Πρακτικά 4ου Διεθνούς Συνεδρίου Ελληνικής Γλωσσολογίας. Thessaloniki 2001, pp. 383-390

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Report on the open letter with a quote and list of signatories ( memento of the original dated November 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on kathimerini.gr  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / news.kathimerini.gr
  2. ↑ awmn.net ( Memento of the original from October 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.awmn.net
  3. ↑ translatum , AWMN
  4. ↑ www.greece.org/hellas/Hlist.html
  5. ↑ Astro Teller: Exegesis . Vintage, New York 1997, ISBN 0-375-70051-X ; German Hello, Alice . dtv, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-423-20279-3
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on December 12, 2007 .