English as we know it today is a mishmash of words that came from everywhere. Sure, the majority of it came from German and evolved through Old English and Middle English until we could no longer read or understand the source languages. Then along the way, we've added a ton of words from other languages. Many can be traced directly to Greek mythology, Latin used in the Roman Empire, and real Greek people and things. So when you say "It's Greek to me," you should be able to figure at least some of it out. A lot of that is because the Greek and Roman Empires were widely influential and rather well documented. Some words were filtered from Latin by the romance languages that descended from it: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, and Romanian. If you ever studied Latin, you can often figure out what new words might mean. And if you run across a Greek god you are unfamiliar with, you can often figure out their story by the modern word we took from their name. -via Digg