Talk:English words of Greek origin

message: Survived: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of English words of Greek origin Mikkalai 18:53, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  VfD 

message: An anonymous editor has just updated the proportion of Greek-derived English words from 10% to 25%. Can anyone provide a source for this?
:These percentages are easily skewed. A lower percentage (lower than the 25 % stated above) is closer to reality. Alexander 007 01:16, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The article Loanword quotes a more realistic (than the "25 %" figure quoted above) percentage from a 1970's study. According to that study, 5.32 % of English words are of Greek origin. Well, probably something like that. Alexander 007 05:05, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Proportion of Greek words in English

message: This problem of missing loanwords in ancient Greek is not a new one.
In fact Plato deals in his entire dialogue Cratylus with those missing loanwords.
He attributes many important names and words of his time to ancient makers of the past.
:...(like) in ancient times, we too seem to have said esia for ousia...
:...and there, my friend, the modern interpreters of Homer may, I think, assist in explaining the view of the ancients. For most of these in their explanations of the poet, assert that he meant by Athene "mind" (nous) and "intelligence" (dianoia), and the maker of names appears to have had a singular notion...
:http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/cratylus.html
There are even names that reflect a long history possibly several millennia ago.
Βόσπορος = βούς + πόρος (cattle passage) Today, no cattle can cross Bosporus, (without using the bridge anyway). Yet, several millennia ago it was probably a cattle passage. Probably a memory from the past.
Θεσσαλία = θέσις αλός (location of sea). It has been estimated today that the pass of Tempe, the canyon between Mt. Olympus and Mt. Ossa, has been opened towards the end of the glacial epoch, possibly 12.000 years BCE, when the ice melted, the sea level rose and water found a way out to the sea.
Μεσόγειος, L.. Mediterraneus (μέση, 'middle' + γη, earth) or Middle Earth. Is it normal to call a Sea... Earth? This could reflect memories of long ago, when during the glacial epoch, Mediterranean basin was possibly Middle Earth with many lakes.--Odysses 18:00, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The actual figure probably is higher than 5.32 % which seems too low (maybe it's even 15%), which is why the article uses 5.32 % as a low-end figure (at least 5.32% of the English language). It's probably true that they did not count words like Tyrant, which though from French is in turn from Greek turannos, etc. The thing to do here is to find a high-end figure quoted (as much as...) in a reliable published source, but original research is not usable. Alexander 007 21:53, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Missing loanwords in ancient Greek

message: I don't think I'd accept the sources named above as reliable. One of them is obviously a Wikipedia mirror itself, and the others are apparently based on hearsay and/or don't say where they got their figures from.
There's specialised linguistic literature on this sort of topic, we really need to stick to that. I'd strongly suggest to only quote works that report on clearly identified empirical studies, whose samples and counting criteria can be verified. There's enough stuff of that kind around, so there's really no need in this case to stick to third-hand speculation.
For the moment, first thing I have here on my shelf: dtv-Atlas Englische Sprache (in German, but written by prominent linguists and quite reliable.) It gives a comparative table of three similar studies. One of them is the one that gives the 5.32% figure. The others are lower. - I'll need to dig into the small print to find out what the original studies were.
Anyway, we got to make three points quite clear:
#Whether or not we count indirect loans (such as Gr > Lt > Fr > Eng) as belonging to the immediate donor or the ultimate donor, and what to do if Gr is itself only an intermediate donor (like in Hebrew > Gr > Lt > Eng), that's a thing we need to leave to the linguists to decide. If we report on a study, we can report on what their criteria were, but if they chose one set of criteria for their studies, then we're stuck with that and just have to report it. If there are different studies with different criteria, fine. I'd guess that most studies are likely to use the "only immediate donor" criterion (i.e. count Gr>Fr>E as "French"), because that's the only criterion that gives objective results in the cases of long borrowing chains where early members (pre-Gr, for instance) are not well known.
#We should make a clear distinction in the article between type frequency (numer of Gr words in the dictionary) and token frequency (number of Greek word occurrences in running text). Since most Greek words are rare in text, token (text) frequency will be much lower than type frequency.
#For token (text) frequency, we need to expect big differences between texts of different registers. Everyday conversation will have much lower percentages than academic prose, for instance. There are such studies, I could dig them out. Don't rely on random web searches please. I've got access to a English linguistics research library, and I'll be there on Tuesday.
#For type (dictionary) frequency, we need to expect big differences between larger and smaller dictionaries. The proportion of Greek words rises dramatically towards the more esoteric areas of vocabulary; thus, a small dictionary that only lists basic vocabulary will have a much lower proportion of Greek words. This is the effect you see in the table from the book I mentioned:
Source language	Shorter Oxford E. Dict. (1964)80.096 words	Shorter Oxford E. Dict. (1964)80.096 words	Advanced Learners Dict. of Curr. E. (1963)27,241 words	Advanced Learners Dict. of Curr. E. (1963)27,241 words	M. West, A general service list of English words (1953)3,984 words	M. West, A general service list of English words (1953)3,984 words
          	N                                         	%                                         	N                                                     	%                                                     	N                                                                 	%
Romance        	24,216                                    	30.23                                     	10,213                                                	37.49                                                 	1,522                                                             	38.20
Latin          	22,638                                    	28.29                                     	6,008                                                 	22.05                                                 	382                                                               	9.59
Greek          	4.262                                     	5.32                                      	433                                                   	1.59                                                  	10                                                                	0.25
Germanic       	21,047                                    	26.28                                     	8,670                                                 	31.83                                                 	2,028                                                             	50.89
Celtic         	274                                       	0.34                                      	58                                                    	0.25                                                  	 -                                                           	 -
Lukas (T.|@) 21:32, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reliable sources? 

message: The National Virtual Translation Center where I got the 10%, is a US governmental service that is linked (among others) to: CIA, FBI, NSA, Homeland Security, Dept. of State and more. I think this source falls neither into the "wikipedia-mirror" category nor into the "hearsay" category.
The other two sites, where I got the 12%, are Answers.com and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Hellenic Republic. Both of these sites are not a mirror of wikipedia (or they would state 5.32% which was the original text in the article). That, however, does not exclude them from the "hearsay" category. Therefore, I agree with Lukas that we need a more scientific approach.
:Sorry, you were right, the relevant passage on the answers.com site was not Wikipedia. It's still third hand, though. The article does cite three works as sources, but it doesn't say which of them that figure is taken from. Lukas (T.|@) 06:16, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Found it! The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition.  2001-05 NikoSilver 17:51, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Reliable Sources

message: Things may look very complicated, but they actually aren't. We just need to fill-in the following table:
                                                                                                      	              	               	
                                                                                                      	Original Donor	Immediate Donor	
Total Greek contribution to English vocabulary, regardles of frequency of use                         	??.??%        	??.??%         	
Text-Weighted: Greek contribution to English TEXTS, weighted by frequency of use                      	??,??%        	??,??%         	
Oral-Weighted: Greek contribution to English everyday ORAL communication, weighted by frequency of use	??,??%        	??,??%         	
I think this pretty-much covers everything. I would therefore like to request the help of Lukas, as well as everybody else's who has the knowledge, background and access to such studies, in order to close the issue and make this article complete, accurate and, above all, NEUTRAL.
NikoSilver 00:47, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Summary

message: I had promised I'd do a quick library search the other day. Unfortunately I didn't come up with as much as I had hoped. I have dug out the ultimate source of that 5.3% figure and some more info on how it was done (it's indeed only the immediate donor languages, as we figured out). I couldn't find anything about the text frequencies, which is a disappointment. As for statistics of indirect donor languages, not much seems to have been done at all. There is a reason for this, I guess: People who do these kinds of studies are interested in finding out something about English. The existence of a loanword always tells us something about the cultural relation between the receiving and the immediate donor language. If English speakers in the 14th century started saying "government" instead of "rīc", that tells us a lot about the cultural role of French at the time. It tells us precious little about Greek ("kybern-", if that is indeed the etymon). The English at the time were using the word because it sounded cool, because it was French. They didn't care whether it had been Greek a thousand years earlier. Maybe that's one of the reasons why linguists haven't felt such statistics were much worth it. - I'll be back with the bibliography details later. Lukas (T.|@) 22:48, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My friend, I was disappointed too, when I searched the web before that. Sure, the influence plays a role, but there are other important things too. I think these stats ARE WORTH it. After all, we are talking about one of the greatest cultural contributions that ever existed. Why not also in vocabulary? NikoSilver 00:18, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Literature search

message: ::Please read the whole discussion, starting at least from the heading:
::"More than 10%" Published by a reliable source.
::Otherwise, your comments may have already been covered. NikoSilver 15:59, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestion for anyone who wants to edit his opinion here

message: Everybody, please check what Politis says just some paragraphs above at 14:27, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chronology etc 

message: I just realized that we have two similar articles Loanword and English words of Greek origin.
Loanword as the name implies, refer only to the immediate donor, hence the 5.32% figure from Scheler. 
Now English words of Greek origin, also as the name implies, should include all of the above categories (indirect and coinages).
This is the basic difference between these two articles, therefore they should not include the same figures. Otherwise there wouldn't be any reason to have two articles.   21:45, February 24, 2006 Odysses 
:The articles do not include the same figures now. We also mention the 5.32% thing for clearing things out. What is your point? NikoSilver 23:10, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: ''Loanword'' versus ''English words of Greek origin''

message: Why is there so much text before the first heading? I'm tempted to put a cleanup flag on the article. Garrie 05:12, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introductory paragraph 

message: "or from Ancient Greek texts" -> from which dialect?
I think it would be nice to explicit this, although I can't do it because I don't know the answer (and I can't find it on the web either).
I think it's relevant because some characters were transcribed differently in different dialects, for instance glossa / glotta. I know English has both of these, but is there a dialect that is predominant? If not, it could be equally interesting to mention something like "from every Ancient Greek dialect". PeterMellow 06:22, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  from which greek dialect? 

message: Since I'm writing an essay for a Pan-Hellenic Scholarship foundation, I did much research on this and found an article in Greek here:  For those who cannot read Greek, the Google translation of this is below, although, having had it personally translated over the phone by someone who is completely fluent in both languages, I must say this is a poor translation. Hopefully you will get the jist, though. Basically, Mr. Konstantinides says that 68% of all English words come from Greek, excluding botany, chemistry and zoology. If we add these, AND include words that are half of Greek origin, and half of another, such as Latin or something else, the total is 74.48%. I know this is really high, and it is definitely specialized, as many more scientific words come from Greek than do everyday words, but I believe it reflects the TOTAL English language, not just spoken English. For my report, this is a good number, although I understand that a Wikipedia article probably should be lower and reflect the percentage in everyday spoken English. I'm not good at Wikipedia formatting, so I'll try to sign my name. Below is the article, run through google translator. Sorry for the bad formatting...I am horrible at Wiki-style websites and understanding formatting...someone please edit the format of the below article. TheotokosFan (talk) 23:42, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Please don't cut and paste long articles into Wikipedia.  It is a violation of the original author's copyright, and serves no purpose -- instead, you can link to Google Translate, if you like, like this. --Macrakis (talk) 00:35, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  more on Aristidis Konstantinidis 

message: Macrakis, we had exhaustive discussions on the issue on coined words in this page and we have come to a final agreement. They should be included in this article as per above references. I see no point in coming back again on this issue. Odysses (₪) 20:33, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Coined words  

message: More English words of Greek origin need to be included "Music" "Drama" "Comedy" "Tragedy" "Politics" "Strategy"  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.220.219.168 (talk) 07:22, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  There are more words of Greek origin didn't included! 

message: Hello he'll are you 49.184.19.133 (talk) 04:57, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hi