Greek-Canadian Koiné: The Emergence of a Koiné among Greek-Canadian Immigrants

Abstract

The present paper is a contribution to the study of a new Modern Greek variety that is spoken in Canada by first-generation immigrants who arrived in this country between 1945 and 1975. This variety displays features originating from: (a) A Common Modern Greek spoken in Greece around the middle of the 20th century, (b) mutually intelligible characteristics of the immigrants’ native dialectal varieties, mainly from the Peloponnese, (c) contact with English, (d) Standard Modern Greek. We present, discuss, and analyze data collected within the framework of the project “ImmiGrec: Stories of Greek immigration in Canada.” We focus on linguistic elements that could be considered indicative features of a Greek-Canadian Koiné, more particularly by investigating the borrowing and integration of English nouns and the variation in the use of the unstressed syllabic augment /e-/ and two different imperfective past suffixes.