ABSTRACT
This chapter explores ways in which the study of language can lead us to a more nuanced and critical perspective on the relationship between Greeks and Turks. It presents the historical background to language contact between Greek and Turkish. The chapter introduces the ideological context in which Greeks' attitudes to Turkish features in their language has developed. It provides some examples of loanwords from Turkish that have disappeared from Greek in the last 200 years. The chapter deals briefly with the features of Turkish loanwords that make them recognizable as such by Greeks, and provides some examples of Greek jokes based on wordplay involving Turkish loanwords. Of all the Orthodox Christian populations of the Ottoman Empire, the Greeks had the closest contacts with Turks, because there were Greek speaking populations throughout the Balkans and Asia Minor. The most perceptible Turkish features in Modern Greek are vocabulary items.
