100 +1 English Words of Greek Origin

The Greek language is the expression and the emblazonment of a nation, the Greek nation, through time. Greeks have saved a tradition which has its fundaments on a spiritual mountain range, metaphorically speaking: the Creto-Mycenean heritage and the heroic ethics, the archaic cities-states and the classical miracle, philosophy, and tragedy, the Macedonian leap, and the Alexandrian flourishing, the Orthodox Christian faith, and the Byzantine renaissance, the Modern Greek folk songs and the rest of the literature. The Greek language is an irrefutable witness of that centuries-old and sublime course and it has been providing the global civilisation with all those words and meanings which contribute to what we call civilisation.

Theory and the empirical or practical knowledge, system and method, logic and organization, hypothesis, criteria and categories, analysis and synthesis, ideas, theses and themes, crisis and problems, technology and machine, type and analogy, phase and programme, sphere and atmosphere, diagnosis, symptoms and therapy, enthusiasm, mystery and magic, symmetry and rhythm, period and epoch, tone and melody, democracy, policy and dialogue, energy and pathos, poetry, theatre and drama, economy, mathematics and arithmetic, symphony, music and orchestra, school, myth, and history are some of the key-words which have passed from Greek into other European languages having been the basis of the European and more generally the Western thought. And since it is well-known that language means thought, a rich language means a rich thought process.

…and English

According to Eurostat, the statistical service of the European Union, it is estimated that more than 50% of the European Union population speak English as their mother tongue or use it in their communication. In addition to that, there are approximately 400 million people who are native English speakers in all over the world. Therefore, English is the lingua franca (common language) of our time and it plays an important role in the connection of different peoples with each other.