The project

The Greeklish Project began in Melbourne in 2014, when Kyriakos Gold, raised in Thessaloniki and working in Greek Australian media, set out to record the Greek he heard around him that was not the Greek he had grown up with: το κάρο for the car, η μαρκέτα for the market, το φρίτζι for the fridge. The collection became a public event at the Greek Centre in 2015, with the community shouting words at the stage, and an online dictionary, To Booko, in 2016. In 2026 the dictionary was rebuilt from the ground up with every entry sourced.

To Booko is the template for the other two projects. Its method, its editorial standards and its Sources page are what the Italglish and Spanglish consultations inherit, and its name, a word from the language itself, is why those dictionaries will be named by their communities rather than by us.

What is in it

398 entries and 35 phrases across five countries, from the earliest written record, George Seferis's 1942 glossary of the Greek of the Transvaal, through Anastasios Tamis's fieldwork in Victoria in the 1980s and Angeliki Alvanoudi's in Cairns in 2013, to words sent in by readers this year. Words recorded in more than one country appear under every flag that heard them. The alphabet runs both ways, Greek and Latin, and every word a source printed only in Latin letters carries its Greek spelling marked as ours.

The full story and the press on To Booko's About page.