Cypriot Greek

Template:Infobox language

**Cypriot Greek** (Template:Lang-el Template:IPA-el or Template:Lang Template:IPA-el) is the variety of Modern Greek that is spoken by the majority of the Cypriot populace and Greek Cypriot diaspora. It is considered a divergent variety as it differs from Standard Modern GreekTemplate:Efn in various aspects of its lexicon,Template:Sfn phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and even pragmatics,Template:Sfn not only for historical reasons, but also because of geographical isolation, different settlement patterns, and extensive contact with typologically distinct languages.Template:Sfn

## Classification

 File:Griechisch Isoglossen 1900.png  Cypriot Greek is not an evolution of ancient Arcadocypriot Greek, but derives from Byzantine Medieval Greek.Template:Sfn It has traditionally been placed in the southeastern group of Modern Greek varieties, along with the dialects of the Dodecanese and Chios (with which it shares several phonological phenomena).

Though Cypriot Greek tends to be regarded as a dialect by its speakers, it is unintelligible to speakers of Standard Modern Greek without adequate prior exposure.Template:Sfn Greek-speaking Cypriots are diglossic in the vernacular Cypriot Greek (the "low" variety) and Standard Modern Greek (the "high" variety).Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Cypriot Greek is itself a dialect continuum with an emerging koine.Template:Sfn Davy, Ioannou & Panayotou (1996) have argued that diglossia has given way to a "post-diglossic [dialectal] continuum [...] a quasi-continuous spread of overlapping varieties".Template:Sfn

## Phonology

Studies of the phonology of Cypriot Greek are few and tend to examine very specific phenomena, e.g. gemination, "glide hardening". A general overview of the phonology of Cypriot Greek has only ever been attempted once, by Template:Harvnb, but parts of it are now contested.

### Consonants

Cypriot Greek has geminate and palato-alveolar consonants, which Standard Modern Greek lacks, as well as a contrast between Template:IPA and Template:IPA, which Standard Modern Greek also lacks.Template:Sfn The table below, adapted from Template:Harvnb, depicts the consonantal inventory of Cypriot Greek.

Stops Template:IPA and affricate Template:IPA are unaspirated and may be pronounced weakly voiced in fast speech.Template:Sfn Template:IPA are always heavily aspirated and they are never preceded by nasals,Template:Sfn with the exception of some loans, e.g. Template:IPA "shampoo".Template:Sfn Template:IPA and Template:IPA are laminal post-alveolars.Template:Sfn Template:IPA is pronounced similarly to Template:IPA, in terms of closure duration and aspiration.Template:Sfn

Voiced fricatives Template:IPA are often pronounced as approximants and they are regularly elided when intervocalic.Template:Sfn Template:IPA is similarly often realised as an approximant Template:IPA link in weak positions.Template:Sfn

The palatal lateral approximant Template:IPA is most often realised as a singleton or geminate lateral Template:IPA or a singleton or geminate fricative Template:IPA, and sometimes as a glide Template:IPA (cf. yeísmo).Template:Sfn The circumstances under which all the different variants surface are not very well understood, but Template:IPA appear to be favoured in stressed syllables and word-finally, and before Template:IPA.Template:Sfn Template:Harvnb identifies the following phonological and non-phonological influencing factors: stress, preceding vowel, following vowel, position inside word; and sex, education, region, and time spent living in Greece (where Template:IPA is standard).Template:Sfn Template:Harvnb notes that speakers of some local varieties, notably that of Larnaca, "substitute" the geminate fricative for Template:IPA,Template:Sfn but Template:Harvnb contests this, saying that, "Template:IPA is robustly present in the three urban areas of Lefkosia, Lemesos and Larnaka as well as the rural Kokinohoria region, especially among teenaged speakers ... the innovative pronunciation Template:IPA is not a feature of any local patois, but rather a supra-local feature."Template:Sfn

The palatal nasal Template:IPA is produced somewhat longer than other singleton nasals, though not as long as geminates. Template:IPA is similarly "rather long".Template:Sfn

The alveolar trill Template:IPA is the geminate counterpart of the tap Template:IPA.Template:Sfn

#### Palatalisation and glide hardening

In analyses that posit a phonemic (but not phonetic) glide Template:IPA, palatals and postalveolars arise from `CJV` (consonant–glide–vowel) clusters, namely:Template:Sfn

Template:Columns-list

The glide is not assimilated, but hardens to an obstruent Template:IPA after Template:IPA and to Template:IPA after Template:IPA.Template:Sfn At any rate, velar stops and fricatives are in complementary distribution with palatals and postalveolars before front vowels Template:IPA;Template:Sfn that is to say, broadly, Template:IPA are palatalised to either Template:IPA or Template:IPA; Template:IPA to Template:IPA or Template:IPA; and Template:IPA to Template:IPA.

#### Geminates

There is considerable disagreement on how to classify Cypriot Greek geminates, though they are now generally understood to be "geminates proper" (rather than clusters of identical phonemes or "fortis" consonants).Template:Sfn Geminates are 1.5 to 2 times longer than singletons, depending, primarily, on position and stress.Template:Sfn Geminates occur both word-initially and word-medially. Word-initial geminates tend to be somewhat longer.Template:Sfn Template:Harvnb have found that "for stops, in particular, this lengthening affects both closure duration and VOT",Template:Sfn but Template:Harvnb claim that stops contrast only in aspiration, and not duration.Template:Sfn Template:Harvnb undertook a perceptual study with thirty native speakers of Cypriot Greek,Template:Sfn and has found that both closure duration and (the duration and properties of) aspiration provide important cues in distinguishing between the two kinds of stops, but aspiration is slightly more significant.Template:Sfn

#### Assimilatory processes

Word-final Template:IPA assimilates with succeeding consonants—other than stops and affricates—at word boundaries producing post-lexical geminates.Template:Sfn Consequently, geminate voiced fricatives, though generally not phonemic, do occur as allophones. Below are some examples of geminates to arise from sandhi.

* Template:IPA → Template:IPA Template:Lang "Lucas" (acc.)
* Template:IPA → Template:IPA Template:Lang "[he] is here"
* Template:IPA → Template:IPA Template:Lang "from the root"

In contrast, singleton stops and affricates do not undergo gemination, but become fully voiced when preceded by a nasal, with the nasal becoming homorganic.Template:Sfn This process is not restricted to terminal nasals; singleton stops and affricates always become voiced following a nasal.Template:Sfn

* Template:IPA → Template:IPA Template:Lang "[we] smoke cigars"
* Template:IPA → Template:IPA Template:Lang "even though"
* Template:IPA → Template:IPA Template:Lang "on Sunday"

Word-final Template:IPA is altogether elided before geminate stops and consonant clusters:Template:Sfn

* Template:IPA → Template:IPA Template:Lang "[we] bought flowers"
* Template:IPA → Template:IPA Template:Lang "on the head"

Like with Template:IPA, word-final Template:IPA assimilates to following Template:IPA and Template:IPA producing geminates:Template:Sfn

* Template:IPA → Template:IPA Template:Lang "let it snow"

Lastly, word-final Template:IPA becomes voiced when followed by a voiced consonant belonging to the same phrase:Template:Sfn

* Template:IPA → Template:IPA Template:Lang "of Malta"
* Template:IPA → Template:IPA Template:Lang "race"

### Vowels

 File:Cypriot Greek vowel chart.svg  Cypriot Greek has a five-vowel system Template:IPATemplate:Sfn Template:Sfn that is nearly identical to that of Standard Modern Greek (see for an acoustic comparison of the two vowel systems Template:Harvnb and Template:Harvnb).

Back vowels Template:IPA following Template:IPA at the end of an utterance are regularly reduced (50% of all cases presented in study) to "fricated vowels" (40% of all cases, cf. Slavic yers), and are sometimes elided altogether (5% of all cases).Template:Sfn

In glide-less analyses, Template:IPA may alternate with Template:IPA or Template:IPA,Template:Sfn e.g. Template:IPA "cage" → Template:IPA "cages", or Template:IPA "koulouri" → Template:IPA "koulouria"; and, like in Standard Modern Greek, it is pronounced Template:IPA when found between Template:IPA and another vowel that belongs to the same syllable,Template:Sfn e.g. Template:IPA "one" (f.).

### Stress

Cypriot Greek has "dynamic" stress.Template:Sfn Both consonants and vowels are longer in stressed than in unstressed syllables, and the effect is stronger word-initially.Template:Sfn There is only one stress per word, and it can fall on any of the last four syllables. Stress on the fourth syllable from the end of a word is rare and normally limited to certain verb forms. Because of this possibility, however, when words with antepenultimate stress are followed by an enclitic in Cypriot Greek, no extra stress is added (unlike Standard Modern Greek, where the stress can only fall on one of the last three syllables),Template:Sfn e.g. Cypriot Greek Template:Lang Template:IPA, Standard Modern Greek Template:Lang Template:IPA "my bicycle".

## Grammar

Template:Further

An overview of syntactic and morphological differences between Standard Modern Greek and Cypriot Greek can be found in Template:Harvnb.

## Vocabulary

More loanwords are in everyday use than in Standard Modern Greek.Template:Sfn These come from Old French, Italian, Provençal, Turkish and, increasingly, from English. There are also Arabic expressions (via Turkish) like Template:Lang Template:IPA "mashallah" and Template:Lang Template:IPA "inshallah". Much of the Cypriot core vocabulary is different to the modern standard's, e.g. Template:Lang Template:IPA in addition to μιλώ "I talk", Template:Lang Template:IPA instead of βλέπω "I look", etc. A historically interesting example is the occasional use of Archaic πόθεν instead of από πού for the interrogative "from where?" *Ethnologue* reports that the lexical similarity between Cypriot Greek and Demotic Greek is in the range of 84–93%.

## Orthography

Template:See also

There is no established orthography for Cypriot Greek.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Efforts have been made to introduce diacritics to the Greek alphabet to represent palato-alveolar consonants found in Cypriot, but not in Standard Modern Greek, e.g. the combining caron Template:Angle bracket, by the authors of the "Syntychies" lexicographic database at the University of Cyprus.Template:Sfn When diacritics are not used, an epenthetic Template:Angle bracket—often accompanied by the systematic substitution of the preceding consonant letter—may be used to the same effect (as in Polish), e.g. Standard Modern Greek Template:Lang Template:IPA → Cypriot Greek Template:Lang Template:IPA, Standard Modern Greek Template:Lang Template:IPA → Cypriot Greek Template:Lang Template:IPA.

Geminates (and aspirates) are represented by two of the same letter, e.g. Template:Lang Template:IPA "today", though this may not be done in cases where the spelling would not coincide with Standard Modern Greek's, e.g. Template:Lang would still be spelt Template:Lang.Template:Efn

In computer-mediated communication, Cypriot Greek, like Standard Modern Greek, is commonly written in the Latin script,Template:Sfn and English spelling conventions may be adopted for shared sounds,Template:Sfn e.g. Template:Angle bracket for Template:IPA (and Template:IPA).

## History

Template:Unreferenced section

Cyprus was cut off from the rest of the Greek-speaking world from the 7th to the 10th century AD due to Arab attacks. It was reintegrated in the Byzantine Empire in 962 to be isolated again in 1191 when it fell to the hands of the Crusaders. These periods of isolation led to the development of various linguistic characteristics distinct from Byzantine Greek.

The oldest surviving written works in Cypriot date back to the Medieval period. Some of these are: the legal code of the Kingdom of Cyprus, the Assizes of Jerusalem; the chronicles of Leontios Machairas and Georgios Voustronios; and a collection of sonnets in the manner of Francesco Petrarca. In the past hundred years, the dialect has been used in poetry (with major poets being Vasilis Michaelides and Dimitris Lipertis). It is also traditionally used in folk songs and Template:Lang (battle poetry, a form of playing the Dozens) and the tradition of Template:Lang (bards).

In the late seventies, Minister of Education Chrysostomos A. Sofianos upgraded the status of Cypriot by introducing it in education. More recently, it has been used in music, e.g. in reggae by Hadji Mike and in rap by several Cypriot hip hop groups, such as Dimiourgoi Neas Antilipsis (DNA). Locally produced television shows, usually comedies or soap operas, make use of the dialect, e.g. "Vourate Geitonoi" (Template:Lang instead of Template:Lang) or "Oi Takkoi" (Template:Lang being a uniquely Cypriot name). The 2006 feature film *Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest* features actor Jimmy Roussounis arguing in Cypriot with another crew member speaking Gibrizlidja (Cypriot Turkish) about a captain's hat they find in the sea. Peter Polycarpou routinely spoke in Cypriot in his role as Chris Theodopolopoudos in the British television comedy series *Birds of a Feather*. In Episode 04 Season 01 of American TV series *The Leftovers* which aired on 20 July 2014, Alex Malaos's character uses the dialect saying *"Εκατάλαβα σε".*

Today, Cypriot Greek is the only variety of Modern Greek with a significant presence of spontaneous use online, including blogs and internet forums, and there exists a variant of Greeklish that reflects its distinct phonology.

## See also

* Languages of Cyprus
* Arcadocypriot Greek for the ancient Greek spoken on Cyprus

## Footnotes

**Explanatory notes** Template:Notelist

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## Bibliography

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## Further reading

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