'What on earth are they talking about?' Attitudes to language mixing

The Greek-English mixture among the first-generation immigrants in Canada is characterized as unfamiliar and hard to understand. A typical hellenicised English phrase is: "Tonight there are belowzeria" (tonight the temperature is below zero).


RES.: Do you ever use English words?
AN.: Very rarely, too rarely. When I came, I remember my mother-in-law talking helter-skelter, that is, Greek with many English words. That was something I did not like from the beginning. In other words, I don’t like the language being mixed up. It is the worst thing: speaking Greek and throwing around English words. You either speak one language or speak the other. I never liked these hobbled things. So, I always try not to use English words. Not only my mother-in-law but all the women of her generation spoke Greek like that. They spoke Greek or English, I do not know. I ’ll say something now that the old Greek women used to say: "Let's go [na crossarume] the street, now that the light is green."
RES.: I understand, yes.
AN.: Or tonight, it has [belowzeria]. The temperature is going down. We'll have [belowzeria] tonight. I was listening to them and said: "What on earth are they saying?" That’s the way they had learned to speak. It's not... it was not bad anyway, but… okay. Luckily things have changed.