Learning Journal #7

Greek belongs to the Hellenic branch of the Indo-European language family.

There are a lot of words in Modern Greek that have been borrowed from Turkish during the Ottoman occupation in the late 1900s. These mostly include food names like 'ιμάμ μπαϊλντί', 'γιουβέτσι', 'μπριάμ', 'κεμπάμπ', and others.

Similarly, Greece has borrowed some more modern words from French, like 'κρουασάν', 'ασανσέρ', which mean croissant and elevator respectively. The latter is an interesting case because the Greek language already had a word for elevator which is still in use, but the French version is simpler and prevails in everyday speech.

Of course there are English terms for technology-related objects like 'laptop', or 'playstation'.

This interchange of labguages is very significant historically, in my opinion, as it shows the interactions of the countries throughout time. 300 years from now, perhaps people will be looking into how globalization will have affected languages around the world.

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