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Cypriot Greek (, or κυπριακά ) is the variety of Modern Greek that is spoken by the majority of the Cyprus populace and Greek Cypriot diaspora. It is considered a divergent dialect as it differs from Standard Modern Greek in various aspects of its lexicon, phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and even pragmatics, not only for historical reasons but also because of geographical isolation, and extensive contact with typologically distinct languages.
[[File:Griechisch Isoglossen 1900.png|thumb|300px|Some phonological phenomena Cypriot shares with varieties of the Aegean: word-initial gemination; word-final ; and palatalisation of to .]]
Cypriot Greek is not an evolution of ancient Arcadocypriot Greek, but derives from Byzantine Medieval Greek. 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).
As Cypriot Greek tends to be regarded as a dialect by its speakers, it remains largely understandable to speakers of Standard Modern Greek, though it can be challenging without prior exposure. Greek-speaking Cypriot society is diglossia, with vernacular Cypriot Greek (the "low" variety) and Standard Modern Greek (the "high" variety). Cypriot Greek is itself a dialect continuum with an emerging koine. Davy, Ioannou & Panayotou (1996) have argued that diglossia has given way to a "post-diglossic dialectal continuum ... a quasi-continuous spread of overlapping varieties".
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 Boustronios; 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 τσιαττιστά (tsiattistá, battle poetry, a form of playing the Dozens) and the tradition of ποιητάρηες (poiitáries, bards).
Cypriot Greek had been historically used by some members of the Turkish Cypriots, especially after the end of Ottoman Cyprus and consequent British Cyprus. In 1960, it was reported that 38% of the Turkish Cypriots were able to speak Greek along with Cypriot Turkish. Some Turkish Cypriots of Nicosia and Paphos were also speaking Cypriot Greek as their first language according to early 20th century population records.
In the late 1970s, 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 italic=no (DNA). Locally produced television shows, usually comedies or soap operas, make use of the dialect, for example with Vourate Geitonoi (βουράτε instead of τρέξτε) or Oi Takkoi (Τάκκος being a uniquely Cypriot name). The 2006 feature film features actor Jimmy Roussounis arguing in Cypriot with another crew member speaking Cypriot Turkish (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 a July 2014 episode of the American TV series The Leftovers, Alex Malaos's character uses the dialect saying "Εκατάλαβα σε" ('I understood'). In the American mockumentary comedy horror television series What We Do in the Shadows, actress Natasia Demetriou, as the vampiric character Nadja, occasionally exclaims phrases in Cypriot.
Today, Cypriot Greek is the only other variety of Modern Greek apart from Standard Modern Greek with a significant presence of spontaneous use online, including and , and there exists a variant of Greeklish that reflects its distinct phonology.
| + Consonant ! rowspan="2" colspan="2" | ! colspan="2" Labial consonant ! colspan="2" | Dental consonant ! colspan="2" | Alveolar ! colspan="2" | Post- alveolar ! colspan="2" | Palatal ! colspan="2" | Velar consonant |
Stops and affricate are unaspirated and may be pronounced weakly voiced in fast speech. are always heavily aspirated and they are never preceded by nasals, with the exception of some loanword, e.g. "shampoo". and are laminal post-alveolars. is pronounced similarly to , in terms of closure duration and aspiration.
Voiced fricatives are often pronounced as approximants and they are regularly Elision when intervocalic. is similarly often realised as an approximant in weak positions.
The palatal lateral approximant is most often realised as a singleton or geminate lateral or a singleton or geminate fricative , and sometimes as a glide (cf. yeísmo). The circumstances under which all the different variants surface are not very well understood, but appear to be favoured in stressed syllables and word-finally, and before . 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 is standard). notes that speakers of some local varieties, notably that of Larnaca, "substitute" the geminate fricative for , but contests this, saying that, " 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 is not a feature of any local patois, but rather a supra-local feature."
The palatal nasal is produced somewhat longer than other single nasals, though not as long as geminates. is similarly "rather long".
The alveolar trill is the geminate counterpart of the tap .
The glide is not assimilated, but hardens to an obstruent after and to after . At any rate, velar stops and fricatives are in complementary distribution with palatals and postalveolars before front vowels ; that is to say, broadly, are palatalised to either or ; to or ; and to .
In contrast, singleton stops and affricates do not undergo gemination, but become fully voiced when preceded by a nasal, with the nasal becoming homorganic. This process is not restricted to terminal nasals; singleton stops and affricates always become voiced following a nasal.
Word-final is altogether Elision before geminate stops and consonant clusters:
Like with , word-final assimilates to following and producing geminates:
Lastly, word-final becomes voiced when followed by a voiced consonant belonging to the same phrase, like in Standard Greek:
Close vowels following 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 ), and are sometimes Elision altogether (5% of all cases).
In glide-less analyses, may alternate with or , e.g. "cage" → "cages", or "" → "koulouria"; and, like in Standard Modern Greek, it is pronounced when found between and another vowel that belongs to the same syllable, e.g. "one" (f.).
Cypriot Greek is known for having a more conservative grammatical system than Standard Modern Greek. One of the most distinctive conservative features of Cypriot Greek is the preservation of older verb forms and aspectual distinctions that have been lost in the standard language. For instance, where Standard Modern Greek uses a single form έκανε for both the simple past "he did" and the past continuous "he was doing", Cypriot Greek maintains a clear morphological distinction: έκαμεν "he did" and έκαμνεν "he was doing". This mirrors Classical Ancient Greek, which similarly distinguished ἔκαμεν and ἐκάμνεν for those respective meanings. These distinctions are still actively used in spoken Cypriot today, showcasing the dialect's conservative grammatical structure.
Another example is the third person plural present tense form. Where Standard Modern Greek uses κάνουν "they do", Cypriot Greek preserves the older form κάμνουσιν, identical to the Classical Attic Greek κάμνουσιν. This ουσιν ending, now archaic or lost in most other varieties of Greek, remains productive in the Cypriot dialect, further illustrating its retention of ancient morphological patterns.
Some Arabic expressions, such as μάσ̌σ̌αλλα ˈmaʃːalːa "mashallah" and ίσ̌σ̌αλλα ˈiʃːalːa "inshallah", are sometimes used in Cypriot Greek, typically in an ironic or humorous context. Speakers are generally aware of their Turkish origins, and these phrases are not part of the standard or traditional Cypriot Greek vocabulary. Ethnologue reports that the lexical similarity between Cypriot Greek and Demotic Greek is in the range of 84–93%.
(and aspirates) are represented by two of the same letter, e.g. σή μμερα "today", though this may not be done in cases where the spelling would not coincide with Standard Modern Greek's, e.g. σήμμερα would still be spelt σήμερα.
Despite the centuries-long existence of Greek Cypriot literature, the dialect wasn't widely written until the rise of computer-mediated communication in the 2000s. Online and in text messaging, Cypriot Greek, like Standard Modern Greek, is commonly written in the Latin script, and English spelling conventions may be adopted for shared sounds, e.g. for (and ).
The tables below do not imply that they were written down the same in Attic Greek but it is simply using the modern Greek alphabet's pronunciation system applied on attic Greek for comparison purposes.
The classical attic Greek X was pronounced as an aspirated Κ similar to the English K. Θ = aspirated Τ, Γ = ΓΚ/ΓΓ and Β = ΜΠ. In classical attic Greek Η was pronounced a long Ε and not like the modern Greek I, Y
| + !Standard !Classical Attic pronunciation | |
| Χ x | kʰ |
| Θ θ | tʰ |
| Γ ɣ | ΓΚ g |
| Β v | ΜΠ b |
| Η i | ΕΕ ɛː |
| +Some vowel comparisons !Standard !Cypriot !Classical Attic pronunciation | ||
| σκληρό | σκλερό | σκλεερό (σκλɛːρό) |
| μην | μεν | μεεν (μɛːν) |
| +Extra words: !Standard !Cypriot !Classical Attic | ||
| αρέσει | αρέσκει | αρέσκει |
| κάνω | κάμνω | κάμνω |
| κάνουν | κάμνουσιν | κάμνουσιν |
| από που | πόθεν | πόtʰεν |
| English translation of "Η 9η Ιουλίου του 1821" |
| 18 Romaness is a race as old as the world,
No one has ever been found to erase it,
No one, because my God shields it from above. Romaness will vanish only when the world ceases to exist! 19 Slaughter us all, let our blood become a stream, Turn the world a slaughterhouse and the Romans herds of sheep But know that when a stump is cut at the base, Around it, three hundred new sprouts will burst forth. |
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