3 ms·

The Greeks had a word for it until now, as language is deluged by English terms

21 points by BerislavLopac 6y ago

teruakohatu 6y ago
I would say the vast majority of English speakers have no clue which words they use are actually English or borrowed from other languages eg. Ketchup or tycoon (both from China), or made up words that barely qualify as any language eg. "stonks". English is a horrible mishmash that seems to work. Back in the 16th and 17th century English had a debate on how to spell words, with some wanting English to remain closer and Greek and Latin. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_reform https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_re...
- Slippery_John 6y ago
  Well it doesn't really matter if a word is borrowed from another language. A loan word is still a word. Ketchup and tycoon are English words, garage is an English word, schadenfreude is an English word. The fact that these are also words in other languages doesn't change that. That said I can sympathize with wanting to preserve language, but it ultimately can't be controlled without buy-in from the people. On that vein I wonder how effective the French Academy is at combating anglicization.
  - teruakohatu 6y ago
    > Well it doesn't really matter if a word is borrowed from another language. That is your opinion. As an English speaker I don't care less either, English is a mess and that's one of its best features, but I do have sympathy for Greeks who don't want to lose some of their the culture by incorporating English. > schadenfreude is an English word That is debatable. Many consider it a German word.
cafard 6y ago
I find this an amusing phenomenon, given the Greek roots one finds everywhere in English. How many on HN can get through the day without discussing logic or architecture? How many use light-emitting diodes? How long can you go without reading of someone's philanthropy or someone else's misogyny, utopias and dystopias?
elkos 6y ago
I'm Greek and most attempts to "Greekify" technical terms sound silly, weird or terrible. Why I should be comfortable with people adopting Greek terms in Medicine globally and roll my eyes when people use English in IT?
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
  I think it's a matter of habbit. For instance, I'm sure you didn't roll your eyes everytime you heard mathematical, physical or chemical terms translated in Greek: ισοδυναμεί (implies), συνεπάγεται (equivalent), για κάθε (for all), επαγωγή (induction), μοριακό βάρος (molecular weight) etc etc. We translate those terms in Greek to teach them to students who are very sensibly not required to know English to attend a Greek school. Why would we not also translate general computer scince terms? The French have done this to some extent and it's possible to have a fluent conversation about computer science in French, without having to code-switch between French and English every couple of words. I do that often with one of my coleagues who is French -although I have to stop her and ask her "how do we say X in French" a lot, which kind of spoils it to be fair; but that's only the first time or two I want to use a new term. Personally I'm bothered very much by the need to code-switch between Greek and English everytime someone asks me "what I do", when I'm back Home (in Greece). Everytime I try to explain my PhD research, for instance, I find that I speak as if someone had stitched two people together, one English speaker and one Greek speaker, and they kept talking over each other. It can be exhausting actually, it is clunky and ugly and it sounds much more horrible than translating English terms to Greek. Imagine trying to explain "object-oriented programming" to a native Greek speaker, who doesn't know anything about computer science or programming. First you have to try and translate the words. "Προγραμματισμος με αντικείμενα"? There's "αντικειμενοστραφής προγραμματισμός", which is a direct translation and which at least leaves you only needing to explain "object" and "programming" (and "oriented" I guess). And if you repeat it out loud a few times quickly: "αντικειμενοστραφής προγραμματισμός, αντικειμενοστραφής προγραμματισμός, αντικειμενοστραφής προγραμματισμός, αντικειμενοστραφής προγραμματισμός", I'm sure it'll start growing on you :P
bawana 6y ago
All Greek immigrants have spoken Greenglish for decades. Sentences were usually a mix of Greek and English in my youth. This forced me to be right brained and assign meaning to words through imagery. I still visualize a lot and in fact it continues to hobble me in certain areas of physics (quantum) where mechanistic thinking and visual models are not sufficiently descriptive. Perhaps the most amazing thing about ancient Greeks is that they used letters to represent digits. I still cannot wrap my brain around the fact that a word like 'spiti' could have a linguistic as well as numerical interpretation that every ancient Greek would know. Today, all computation with language uses unicode to represent letters. I tried once to make an ancient Greek number to arabic number(the numbers used in English today) converter but failed miserably. Claude Shannon actually made a calculator that used Roman numerals.

21 points by BerislavLopac 6y ago

I would say the vast majority of English speakers have no clue which words they use are actually English or borrowed from other languages eg. Ketchup or tycoon (both from China), or made up words that barely qualify as any language eg. "stonks". English is a horrible mishmash that seems to work. Back in the 16th and 17th century English had a debate on how to spell words, with some wanting English to remain closer and Greek and Latin. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_reform https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_re...

Slippery_John 6y ago
Well it doesn't really matter if a word is borrowed from another language. A loan word is still a word. Ketchup and tycoon are English words, garage is an English word, schadenfreude is an English word. The fact that these are also words in other languages doesn't change that. That said I can sympathize with wanting to preserve language, but it ultimately can't be controlled without buy-in from the people. On that vein I wonder how effective the French Academy is at combating anglicization.
- teruakohatu 6y ago
  > Well it doesn't really matter if a word is borrowed from another language. That is your opinion. As an English speaker I don't care less either, English is a mess and that's one of its best features, but I do have sympathy for Greeks who don't want to lose some of their the culture by incorporating English. > schadenfreude is an English word That is debatable. Many consider it a German word.

cafard 6y ago

I find this an amusing phenomenon, given the Greek roots one finds everywhere in English. How many on HN can get through the day without discussing logic or architecture? How many use light-emitting diodes? How long can you go without reading of someone's philanthropy or someone else's misogyny, utopias and dystopias?

elkos 6y ago

I'm Greek and most attempts to "Greekify" technical terms sound silly, weird or terrible. Why I should be comfortable with people adopting Greek terms in Medicine globally and roll my eyes when people use English in IT?

YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
I think it's a matter of habbit. For instance, I'm sure you didn't roll your eyes everytime you heard mathematical, physical or chemical terms translated in Greek: ισοδυναμεί (implies), συνεπάγεται (equivalent), για κάθε (for all), επαγωγή (induction), μοριακό βάρος (molecular weight) etc etc. We translate those terms in Greek to teach them to students who are very sensibly not required to know English to attend a Greek school. Why would we not also translate general computer scince terms? The French have done this to some extent and it's possible to have a fluent conversation about computer science in French, without having to code-switch between French and English every couple of words. I do that often with one of my coleagues who is French -although I have to stop her and ask her "how do we say X in French" a lot, which kind of spoils it to be fair; but that's only the first time or two I want to use a new term. Personally I'm bothered very much by the need to code-switch between Greek and English everytime someone asks me "what I do", when I'm back Home (in Greece). Everytime I try to explain my PhD research, for instance, I find that I speak as if someone had stitched two people together, one English speaker and one Greek speaker, and they kept talking over each other. It can be exhausting actually, it is clunky and ugly and it sounds much more horrible than translating English terms to Greek. Imagine trying to explain "object-oriented programming" to a native Greek speaker, who doesn't know anything about computer science or programming. First you have to try and translate the words. "Προγραμματισμος με αντικείμενα"? There's "αντικειμενοστραφής προγραμματισμός", which is a direct translation and which at least leaves you only needing to explain "object" and "programming" (and "oriented" I guess). And if you repeat it out loud a few times quickly: "αντικειμενοστραφής προγραμματισμός, αντικειμενοστραφής προγραμματισμός, αντικειμενοστραφής προγραμματισμός, αντικειμενοστραφής προγραμματισμός", I'm sure it'll start growing on you :P

bawana 6y ago

All Greek immigrants have spoken Greenglish for decades. Sentences were usually a mix of Greek and English in my youth. This forced me to be right brained and assign meaning to words through imagery. I still visualize a lot and in fact it continues to hobble me in certain areas of physics (quantum) where mechanistic thinking and visual models are not sufficiently descriptive. Perhaps the most amazing thing about ancient Greeks is that they used letters to represent digits. I still cannot wrap my brain around the fact that a word like 'spiti' could have a linguistic as well as numerical interpretation that every ancient Greek would know. Today, all computation with language uses unicode to represent letters. I tried once to make an ancient Greek number to arabic number(the numbers used in English today) converter but failed miserably. Claude Shannon actually made a calculator that used Roman numerals.