It happens all over the world when untranslatable elements of one language creep into another and become embedded in there, to the extent that it almost becomes a new language.
Chinglish, Greeklish, Hinglish, Spanglish - the combinations are endless. SBS Greek broadcaster and founder of the Greeklish Project Kyriakos Gold wants to share Greeklish and other hybrid languages with Australia.
"We're talking to our partners on how to best deliver this project to the Greek community and understand how we can engage best with communities. Once this is perfected we are going to take it to other cultures as well."
He and a team of volunteers are aiming to record and categorise these languages, starting with Greeklish.
"Those who do hear those words have no idea what we're talking about. They're completely dumbfounded"
The program manager for the Greek Centre for Contemporary Culture, Penny Kyprianou, said many recently arrived Greeks who had come here to escape the economic crisis didn't quite know what to make of Greeklish.
"Those who do hear those words have no idea what we're talking about. They're completely dumbfounded. It's very much a language that's unique to Australia and America and other cultures, countries where that blend has evolved from migrants."
Bureau of Statistics figures show more than 300 different languages were spoken in Australia, making the potential for hybrids endless.
Taglish is one of these - a combination of English and the Filipino language Tagalog.
Originally from the Philippines, restaurateur Raquel San Juan said she had noticed the impact that Australian English was having on the way her daughters spoke her native tongue.
"Over the years when we go back to Manila they try to pick up words and also I find that when we take them back home, it takes them a really short time to pick up terms and they really try to speak," Ms San Juan said. "And I think it's the way they speak or pronounce the Tagalog words, it's a slang because of their Aussie accent."
Also from the Philippines, author Eric Maliwat, has lived in Australia for the past four years.
He said he had noticed native speakers of Tagalog spoke the language a little differently from people in their homeland, with the years spent living in Australia influencing how the language was expressed.
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But he added that the hybrid nature of Tagalog goes back hundreds of years, long before English started to affect the language.
"Filipino language is a hybrid of all the other dialects and languages in the Philippines and some say it's 175 dialects all in all, some say it's 171," said Mr Maliwat.
"But then again apart from all the native dialects and languages spoken in the Philippines, Filipino also is a hybrid or a fusion of Indo-Malayan dialects or languages, and Chinese and Spanish and American English, all of these countries that in one way or another have become part of our Philippines history."
These hybrid ways of speaking have a special name - ethnolects.
Dr Ghil`ad Zuckermann is a Professor of Linguistics and Endangered Languages at the University of Adelaide.
"This is a lect spoken by a specific ethnic group especially in a bilingual environment," he said. "For example, when Greeks or Chinese move or migrate to Australia some of them continue to speak Greek or at least their grandparents, etc.
"Then they have a bilingual situation in which they listen both to English or 'Strine' or Australian English, as well as to Greek, and the result is a blend or a hybridic ethnolect which is based on both languages."
Benefits of speaking an ethnolect
So does speaking English and an ethnolect rather than a formal language still give some of the benefits that come with being bilingual?
Dr Zuckermann said it does.
"A speaker of both Greeklish and English actually does get the benefits that exist in bilingualism," he said.
"Of course it might not be the case of the benefits that you have for example when you speak totally different languages, like Greek and English or like Arabic and English or like Chinese and English".
Dr Zuckermann believed that despite not being fluent in the second language, speaking an ethnolect conferred some advantages for speakers similar to some of those passed on by bilingualism.
