Greeklish, a portmanteau of the words Greek and English, also known as Grenglish or Latinoellinika/Λατινοελληνικά or Frankolevantinika/Φραγκολεβαντίνικα or ASCII Greek, is Greek language written with the Latin alphabet or the early Western Greek alphabet. It is an example of transliteration.

Introduction

Greeklish is commonly used on the Internet when Greek people communicate by email, IRC, instant messaging and occasionally on SMS. Sometimes it is also used in written or oral communication established between native Greek speakers living in the UK. This began as a trend but is now actually used as a slang language.

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, modern software supports many more languages (including Greek), and it is much easier for Greeks to communicate in their mother tongue, Modern Greek, over the Internet. However, people still use Greeklish, because it is faster to type, mainly because one does not have to worry about orthography. (This does not mean it is impossible for a spelling flame war to erupt in a Greeklish forum: users treating Greeklish as a close transliteration rather than a phonetic transcription will object to users who do not. Such a flame war, with much meta-discussion, took place on [1] in August 1997, occasioned by the spelling of the river Evros/Έβρος as Eyros, implying the Greek misspelling Εύρος.)

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 predating the Internet.

The term frankolevantinika properly refers to the use of the Latin script to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism. ("Frankos" is the Greek and Levantine term for Western European, and by extension Roman Catholic.) This usage was part of the broader tendency in the region for script to follow creed (e.g. Greek script for Turkish Orthodox Christians -- "karamanlidika", and the use of Greek and Arabic script in Albania), and was routine in the Venetian-ruled Aegean in the Early Modern era. Indeed, the autograph manuscripts of several Greek literary works of the Renaissance are in Latin script (e.g. the comedy Fortounatos by Markos Antonios Foskolos, 1655). This convention was also known as frankohiotika/φραγκοχιώτικα, "Catholic Chiot", alluding to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios. Hearkening back to this established term, a common (but derogatory) term for Greeklish is frankovlahika/φραγκοβλάχικα -- "hillbilly Western" (exploiting the negative cultural stereotype among ethnic Greeks of the Vlachs).

Orthographic and phonetic Greeklish

Greeklish may be orthographic or phonetic. In orthographic use, the intent is to reproduce Greek orthography closely: there is a one to one mapping between Greek and Latin letters, and digraphs are avoided, with occasional use of punctuation or numerals resembling Greek letters rather than Latin digraphs. While letters are in the first instance chosen for phonetic similarity, visual equivalence, and corresponding keyboard keys, are used when phonetically similar letters are exhausted. Thus, psi (ψ) may be written as 4, y, or ps; xi (ξ) as 3, x, j (the latter a keyboard key equivalent); and theta (θ) as 8, th.

In phonetic use, there is no concern to reproduce Greek orthography, and the Greeklish is a phonetic transcription (usually with English phonetic norms, sometimes with other languages' like German) of Greek words --- although often there is a mixture of the two. In particular, iotacism is preserved: the various letters and digraphs now pronounced as /i/ are transcribed as i, and not differentiated as they are in an orthographic scheme (e.g. h, i, u, ei, oi for η ι υ ει οι). In a phonetic scheme, xi is usually x or ks; ks is used if x has been chosen, following orthographic norms, for chi (χ). Psi and theta will usually be the digraphs ps and th.

An example of orthographic Greeklish could be the word "plateia", which in Greek means "square" and using the Greek alphabet is spelled "πλατεία". The word "plateia" derives from the exact replacement of each Greek letter with its Latin respective: π=p, λ=l, α=a, τ=t, ε=e, ι=i, α=a.

An example of phonetic Greeklish could be the same word, "square", written like this: "platia". The reason the same word is, in this occasion, written without the letter "e", is the fact that, phonetically, the word "square" in Greek sounds exactly like this: "platia" (since -"εί"- is now pronounced/i/, as an instance of iotacism).

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 his or her own way. This is because of the multiple ways of rendering Greek letters according to phonetic, but more particularly orthographic norms (e.g. different visual equivalents, or keyboard mappings).

ELOT, The Greek Standards Organization, has proposed a standard transliteration, used by the British Council, but not by the general public. But only this ASCII Greek respects the original Greek orthography and allows an automatic, fully reversible transliteration.

Books written in Greeklish

Giannis Androutsopoulos (see References) talks about "Exegesis", a book in Greeklish that was published by Oxy Publications in 2000. The Greeklish transliteration was based on the Greek translation of the original book written by Astro Teller. A novel about Artificial Intelligence, it describes a computer program that has acquired a "mind" of its own. The original book was written entirely in the form of e-mail messages, something that prompted Mr. Androutsopoulos and his collaborators to publish a version of it in Greeklish.

Web sites written in Greeklish

Most Greek 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. It has been considered by many as an act of vandalism of the Greek language. 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 Greeklish for business purposes or business communication is considered as a lack of business ability or respect.

Current trends

Around 2004 a hostile movement against Greeklish appeared in many Greek online Web discussion boards (fora) where Greeklish was the primary "language" of communication. Administrators threatened to ban users who continued to use Greeklish, thus making the use of Greek mandatory, but using Greeklish failed to become a serious reason to get banned. Examples include the Translatum Greek Translation Forum, the Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network Forum, the Venus Project Forum, the adslgr.com Forum, the e-steki.com forum and the Greek Technological Forum. The reason for this is the fact that text written in Greeklish is considerably less aesthetically pleasing, and also much harder to read, compared to text written in the Greek alphabet. A non-Greek speaker/reader can guess this by this example: "δις ιζ χαρντ του ριντ" would be the way to write "this is hard to read" in English but utilizing the Greek alphabet!

A counter argument used by forum users is that a lot of users live abroad, and write from computers they don't own (university or internet cafes). There, they don't have the ability to write in Greek (lack of fonts or proper locale), so Greeklish is the only option (because it's much simpler than it seems).

On Greek IRC and IM, most of the time only Greeklish is used.

It is considered by some that Greeklish is dangerous for the cultural integrity of the Greek language. However, others disagree and although they do not support wide use of Greeklish, they do not consider it an intimate threat.

Not withstanding the loaded politics of Greeklish, jocular use of English, transcribed into Greek and then transliterated into Greeklish, shows how users can manipulate the use of script to ironic effect: if a user, in the middle of a Greeklish conversation, types "dis iz xarnt tou rint" for "this is hard to read" (transliterated via δις ιζ χαρντ του ριντ), they are ironically distancing themselves from their code-switching to English, doubly ironic since the script is Roman but the orthography effectively Greek. (One might retort that this is aesthetically displeasing—but of course that is the point.) This artifice is particularly widespread on the Hellas mailing list.

Wide use for Greeklish in long texts is nowadays (2006) unusual. It is still used, however, among friends as an informal, alternative means of communication for short messages.

Another current trend in Greeklish is the introduction of Leet phrasing and vocabulary. Many Leet words or slang have been internalized within the Greek spoken language through Greek gamers online in games such as World of Warcraft.

Examples:

Greeklish	Explanation
Tsagia	"Good bye", being a word meaning teas, but jokingly used as ciao in supposedly plural
Re c	Pronounced "re sy" meaning roughly "mate, dude"
Kalimerez, Merez	Kalimeres (καλημέρες), meaning (Good) Mornings; note that the final z is inspired from byez
Tpt	Tipota (τίποτα), meaning "nothing"
Dn	Den (δεν), meaning "not"
M	Mou (μου), meaning "my" or "mine"
S	Sou (σου), meaning "your" or "yours"
8l	thelo (θέλω), meaning "Ι want"
n	na (να), meaning "to"
tr	tora (τώρα), meaning "now"
smr	simera (σήμερα), meaning "today"
klnxt	kalinixta (καληνύχτα), meaning "goodnight"

Cypriot variant

Cypriot Greek has a distinct form of Greeklish, which reflects Cypriot phonology; for instance j can indicate the phone [dʒ], which is written in Cypriot Greek as τζι-, and corresponds to palatalised /k/ in standard Greek. For instance, Standard Greek και /ke/ [ce] "and" = Greeklish kai/ke; Cypriot τζιαι [dʒe] ̠ = Cypriot Greeklish tziai or je. Cypriot Leet/Instant Messaging use of Greeklish reflect this. For instance:

Cypriot Greeklish:

ego n 3ero re pe8kia.. skeftoume skeftoume omos tpt.. n mporo na me fantasto na asxoloume tin ipolipi m zoi me ena single prama.. kathe mera jini i idia i doulia! enna spaso! omos me tes epilogies p ekama .. tino pros iatrika j etsi.. ([2] , 2006-03-25 )

Cypriot Greek:

Εγώ εν ξέρω ρε παιθκιά... σκέφτουμαι σκέφτουμαι όμως τίποτα... εν μπορώ να με φανταστώ να ασχολούμαι την υπόλοιπή μου ζωή με ένα sinɡle πράμα... κάθε μέρα τζιείνη η ίδια η δουλειά! Εννα σπάσω! Όμως με τες επιλογές που έκαμα... τείνω προς ιατρικά τζιαι έτσι...

IM-isms: n = en εν "not" (in Standard Greek: d = den δεν); tpt = tipota "nothing" as in Standard Greek; j = je τζιαι "and"

Examples

Καλημέρα, πώς είστε; (good morning, how are you?)

• Greeklish 1: kalimera, pos iste; (phonetic)
• Greeklish 2: kalhmera, pws eiste? (reconciling with spelling rules)
• Typing as if the keyboard layout were set to Greek, when it is actually set to US English: Kalhm;era, p;vw e;isteq

Θήτα (theta)

• Greeklish 1: thita
• Greeklish 2: 8hta.
• 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 Ε/ε (epsilon) usually Greeks use the English letter e. But most commonly 3 is used for the letter Ξ/ξ (ksi) (because of the visual resemblance). For the letter Ψ/ψ (psi) combination of the letters p and s together (ps) is used.

References

Jannis Androutsopoulos (Γιάννης Ανδρουτσόπουλος), a linguist at the University of Hanover, conducted extensive research on the history and sociolinguistics of Greeklish in 1998-2001; his publications, as well as publications in the media about the phenomenon, are available on a dedicated site.

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

An initiative has started to create a freely-available, open-source converter using user-supplied word transliteration: Greeklish OUT!

See also

Cumae alphabet

External links

• TSIK Greeklish - Free Greek to Greeklish translation tool by Kyriakos Stavrou - TSIK
• Greeklish-to-Greek Conversion by Institute for Language and Speech Processing
• Greek-Greeklish Converter by ASDA
• Greek-Greeklish Converter by Translatum
• Transliteration Chart by Translatum
• Reading Greek ASCII
• ELOT928 to ASCII Greek Converter
• e-Chaos freeware greeklish converter
• [https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1193/ A Firefox extension which automatically converts Greeklish text to Greek text.]

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