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Greek just sounds like nothing else to me. I'm too lazy to check, but I believe Greek is in the Centum branch if IE and actually technically grouped closer to English, not the Satem of most of Eastern Europe (like, say, Albanian). Yeah, about the English thing, I can always spot the Greek immigrant as soon as he opens his mouth.
I'm not a linguist, so I don't know the terms, but mainstream Greek seems to be missing a lot of the necessary "equipment" to speak English properly. Sh-, ch-, j-, zh-, b-, and more sounds are missing, so the Greek person struggles. If you wanna hear something really funny, ask a Greek to pronounce something like "hamburger" (KHAM-poorr-kerr).
The -aki is a diminutive, meaning "little." I've heard it's either Turkish or Venetian in origin. Any Turks or Venetians out there who can verify?
On a different note, where I live Portuguese/Brazilian people (at least not the really dark ones LOL) are often mistaken for Russian. Something about the Portuguese language...lots of "woosh" sounds.
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