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Greeklish Converter-Greek characters to Latin and Latin to Greek

 
Convert greek characters, greeklish converter, convert Greek, Greeklish conversion
Type the Greek text here:

Greeklish Text


The above application works in Firefox/Internet Explorer. Use the application below for other browsers or Greeklish to Greek conversion.

Paste Greeklish text in
the box below and click the button "ÅëëçíéêÜ" to convert greeklish characters into Greek

To convert from Greeklish to Greek use this tool

Introduction
Greeklish (or Grenglish or Latinoellinika / ËáôéíïåëëçíéêÜ or Frankolevantinika / ÖñáãêïëåâÜíôéêá) or ASCII Greek is Greek language written with the Latin alphabet ('English'). It is an example of transliteration.
Greeklish is commonly used on the Internet when Greek people communicate by email, IRC or Instant Messaging. Sometimes it is also used in SMS.

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, because modern software supports a lot of languages including Greek, it is much easier for Greeks to communicate in their mother tongue, Modern Greek, over the Internet. However a lot of people still use Greeklish, maybe because it is faster to type and they do not have to worry about orthography and grammar.

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 before the Internet.

Orthographic and phonetic Greeklish
Greeklish may be orthographic or phonetic.

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 their own way.

ELOT, The Greece's Standards Organization, have 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 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 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. 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, by some.

Current trends
As of 2004, a hostile movement against Greeklish appeared in many Greek online Web discussion boards (fora) where Greeklish was the primary "language" of communication. Administrators often ban users who continue using Greeklish, making the use of Greek mandatory. Examples include the Translatum Greek Translation Forum.

On Greek IRC, only Greeklish is used (as of 2004).

It is considered by many that Greeklish is dangerous for the cultural integrity of the Greek language.

However, others disagree and support Greeklish. Some university professors have proposed the official use of the Latin alphabet in the Greek language for the sake of its modernization.

Examples
* Greek: ÊáëçìÝñá, ðùò åßóáóôå; (goodmorning, how are you?)
* Greeklish 1: kalimera, pos isaste?
* Greeklish 2: kalhmera, pws eisaste?
* Greeklish 3: kalhm3ra, pws eisast3?
* Typing as if the keyboard layout were set to Greek, when it is actually set to US English: Kalhm;era, pvw e;isasteq

* Greek: ÈÞôá (theta)
* Greeklish 1: thita
* Greeklish 2: 8hta
* Greeklish 3: uita
* 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 È/è (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 Å/å (epsilon) usually Greeks use the English letter e or the number 3 (which looks like an epsilon turned on its vertical axis). But most commonly 3 is used for the letter Î/î (ksi) (because of the visual resemblance).

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


This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License . It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Greeklish" .


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