greenglish

Fully cognizant and acknowledging that language changes and that linguistics are descriptive rather than prescriptive, the erosion of Greek, with a cultural continuum spanning some forty centuries is being exacerbated and accelerated by the jargon of the pandemic (naturally a Greek word) and the forms of transmission that lockdown (κλείδωμα από ) privileges. All of these terms would be receptive to translation, if not in an awkward fashion that’s possibly less expedient once these borrowings and neologisms take root but Greek has weathered diglossia (see here and here), plague and tumult before. One wonders what role that outbreaks have had on language and culture, assimilation and isolation in the past, and one can take solace in those new native equivalencies, like diadiktyo (Διαδίκτυο) for internet that do take hold and endure.