About Ethnolects
Ethnolects is an independent, non commercial research project that records the words migrants made from English in Greek, Italian and Spanish, and publishes them as dictionaries their communities can read, correct and add to.
It grew out of The Greeklish Project, which Kyriakos Gold began in Melbourne in 2014 after years of noticing, on air and off, that the Greek spoken around him was not the Greek he had grown up with in Thessaloniki. The project became a word collection, then a public event at the Greek Centre, then To Booko, an online dictionary first published in 2016 and rebuilt in 2026 with its sources attached. Ethnolects extends the same method to the two other great migrant languages of the English speaking world, Italian and Spanish, beginning with their Australian record because that is where the project lives and because it is the record most at risk of being lost.
The dictionaries are free to read, free to contribute to and free to cite. Words contributed by readers are published under their contributor's name and may be reused with attribution to the contributor and the dictionary.
The projects
The Greeklish Project publishes To Booko, the Greeklish dictionary, at tobooko.com. Editor: Kyriakos Gold.
The Italglish Project is in open consultation. Community editors and academic advisers are being sought at italglishproject.com.
The Spanglish Project is in open consultation. Community editors and academic advisers are being sought at spanglishproject.com.
How to cite
The project: Gold, Kyriakos (ed.) (2026). Ethnolects: dictionaries of the languages migrants made. Melbourne. https://ethnolects.org
A dictionary: Gold, Kyriakos (ed.) (2026). To Booko: the Greeklish dictionary. Ethnolects, Melbourne. https://www.tobooko.com
A single entry: Gold, Kyriakos (ed.) (2026). «το κάρο». To Booko: the Greeklish dictionary. https://www.tobooko.com/#karo-au, accessed on the date you read it.
Contact
hello@justgold.net for words, corrections, press, research access and invitations to speak. Instagram @tobooko for the Greek dictionary.