Hellenic Flag Turning into British and American FlagOur Big Fat Hellenic LanguageHellenic Flag turning into British and American Flag

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Hello and Welcome to Our Big Fat Hellenic Language!

      This site is dedicated to the Hellenic language.  Here you will be able to find articles concerning the Hellenic Language and the Hellenic Culture.  There are numerous reasons I decided to build this site which you can find in the mission statement, but the main purpose of this site is to display some of the words that are spoken in everyday English language and have been derived from the Hellenic language. I am sure that in the few pages of our site you will discover that you actually speak much more Hellenic that you thought, and that Greek is not so "Greek to you" after all!

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Xenophon Zolotas Speeches in 1957 and 1959

 

 
 

Big and Fat??!

     The idea for the name of this site was taken from the hit movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding".

        A very good friend of mine from the U.S. called Bob is always making fun of me.  He tells me that I am just like the guy from the movie who claimed that all the words have Hellenic origin.  That is not true of course but every other sentence that he uses I interrupt him and tell him that this word is Hellenic.  It is no secret that I am proud of my origin and the universality of my language.  So I decided to create this site and show to other English speaking people that a lot of the common everyday words that you speak are actually Hellenic.  This site does not claim that it has all the words listed.  Not by far!  I will try to include though a lot of words but according to recent calculations there are more than 80.000 words and terms that are used in the English vocabulary that are Hellenic.

        I don't think I will ever come close to have a complete list of the words.  However I will try to include in this web site as many words that are used everyday in the English language and a lot of the people do not know that they are actually of Hellenic origin!!!

  
 

What is that weird looking flag?

     I get a lot this question.  This flag is a combination of 3 flags. The Hellenic , the U.K. and the U.S.A. flag.  It shows a Hellenic flag being transformed into an English (top right) and into a U.S.A. Flag (bottom and bottom right).  What it tries to signify is the transformation of the Hellenic language into the English language.(British and American).
 

Why Our?

      The reason that I used the word Our, is because I believe that Hellenic is a universal language.  French, Spanish, Italian, English, German have literally dozens of thousands of words in their vocabulary that are of Hellenic origin.  Especially for Spanish the sounds and even the grammar has a striking resemblance with the Hellenic language.  That is why it is very easy for Spanish or Portuguese speaking people to learn Hellenic and vice versa.

    So in my opinion I cannot claim that it is MY Hellenic language but rather OUR language.
 

Don't you mean Greek Language?

     Well actually both words are correct.  Both names are ancient Hellenic and actually the term "Greek" is older than the term Hellene.  However the use of the term Hellas is more "politically correct" for the following reasons :

  • The official name of the country is "The Hellenic Republic" which is what is written on all the Hellenic passports.  There is no mention of the word Greece.

  • The Hellenes do not use the word Greece (Γρεκία) in their everyday vocabulary and neither do they use the word Greek (Γρεκός).  This term is obsolete.

  • The Hellenes use the word Hellas when they speak about their country. (Those that watched the football games in the European Cup, must have heard the funs shouting "Hellas" and not Greece.  On the uniforms also of the national Hellenic teams, the word printed in the back is "Hellas".

 

So What Terms Could I use?

     So if you want to be "politically correct" although very few Americans will understand what you are saying, (unless of course they visited this site), you could use the terms :

  • Hellas* for the name of the country

  • Hellene(s)* for the inhabitants of the country of Hellas and finally

  • Hellenic* for anything that has Hellenic origin like the Hellenic islands, Hellenic feta, Hellenic olive oil, Hellenic government, Hellenic national team and so on...

* Please note that all those terms are English terms contained in every English dictionary.

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