Some Desiderata in Teaching Scientific And Legal LSP in Modern Greek: The Case of Loanwords

Abstract

Classical Greek has traditionally been a language used as a source of LSP for other European languages in various thematic areas. Standard Modern Greek, however, borrows rather than lends LSP, which mostly involves re-borrowing of terminology coined on the basis of (originally) Greek roots, stems, affixes and combining forms. This poses the problem of adaptation to the phonological (especially phonotactic) and morphological system of Standard Modern Greek. A closer study of selected cases shows that the ISO term formation principles of linguistic correctness and consistency are not always observed. Occasionally, terminological choice is possible, with one form that observes the above-mentioned principles and another that does not observe them being available. Therefore, with this empirical research the methodology rests on Google Search method for identifying so called terminological doublets, in the end focusing on the case study and description of the four Greek terms – ψυχεδέλεια psychedelia’, κοσμετολογία cosmetology’, πλαγκτόν plankton’, and ιονισμός ionisation’; the terms have undergone the terminological check-up’ as to alignment with the set requirements against the term formation principles, and bring into focus the didactic facet of teaching LSP in general. Next, striving for adoption of the unified approach in teaching special terminologies may be considered leading under the discussed framework. Given that both multi-cultural and poly-cultural communicative settings such as language teaching and/or translation require an awareness about linguistic perceptions of the Other’ in order to have mutually beneficial results, the recommended terminological choices of the language teacher and/or the translator are discussed, starting from examples of problematic borrowed terms currently used in scientific and legal contexts. The conclusion is that, although descriptive approaches are mainstream in linguistics, in the case of terminology borrowing into once influential languages that claim an uninterrupted history such as Greek a prescriptive approach is sometimes preferable.