Languages of Cyprus

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(Redirected from
Languages of Northern Cyprus
)
This article is about the modern languages. For the ancient Pre-Indo-European language, see Eteocypriot language.
Languages of Cyprus
Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia in English, Greek, and Turkish
Official
Vernacular
Minority
Foreign
Signed
Keyboard layout

The

Standard Modern Greek
and Standard Turkish) are used.

According to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of the Council of Europe, Armenian was recognised as a minority language of Cyprus as of 1 December 2002.

Three "religious groups" are recognised by the constitution; two have their own language:

Kurbetcha, the language of the Kurbet, the Cypriot Roma, is included alongside the other two in literature, but it is not officially recognised in any capacity.[3]

The 2011 census of the Republic recorded 679,883 native speakers of Greek, 34,814 of English, 24,270 of Romanian, 20,984 of Russian and 18,388 of Bulgarian of a total of 840,407. Following the 1974 Turkish invasion, Cyprus was effectively divided into two linguistically near-homogeneous areas: the Turkish-speaking north and the Greek-speaking south;[4]: 2.2  only 1,405 speakers of Turkish reside in territory controlled by the Republic.[5]

The languages of Cyprus have historically exerted influence on one another; Cypriot Greek and Cypriot Turkish borrowed heavily from each other, and Cypriot Greek has helped shape Cypriot Arabic's phonology.[6]: 84 [7]: 223 

Cypriot Greek

Main article: Cypriot Greek
Languages spoken in territory under control of the Republic of Cyprus (2011)[8]
Language
Greek (official)
 
 80.9%
English
 
 4.1%
Romanian
 
 2.9%
Russian
 
 2.5%
Bulgarian
 
 2.2%
Arabic
 
 1.2%
Filipino
 
 1.1%
Turkish (official)
 
 0.2%
Other
 
 4.3%
Unspecified
 
 0.6%

Greek was originally brought to Cyprus by Greek settlers in the 12th–11th century BCE.

Standard Modern Greek (SMG),[10] particularly in its phonology, morphology and vocabulary, and CG may be difficult for speakers of other varieties of Greek to understand[11]: 1886  or may even be unintelligible to some.[12]: 26 [13]: 61  CG has a literary tradition that flourished before the Ottoman conquest of 1571.[14]
: 392 

SMG has been the language of instruction in Greek Cypriot education since the late 19th century (then

code-switch between the two varieties in formal settings. Greek Cypriots' tendency to "downplay the differences between the two varieties"[12]: 35  has been thought to help preserve diglossia in circumstances that would have otherwise led to the demise of the low variety (CG).[3]: 534–535 [11]
: 1887 

Many Turkish Cypriots have traditionally (prior to 1974) been fluent in CG, meaning CG served as the "vernacular lingua franca" of the island.[11]: 1886  Some Turkish Cypriots were uni-lingual in Greek.[16][17][18]

Cypriot Turkish

Main article: Cypriot Turkish
Road sign outside Pyla, Cyprus in Greek (in capital letters, top), Turkish (middle) and romanised Greek (bottom)

Emanating from Anatolia and evolved for four centuries, Cypriot Turkish is the vernacular spoken by Cypriots with Ottoman ancestry, as well as by Cypriots who converted to Islam during Ottoman rule.[19]

Cypriot Turkish consists of a blend of

Yörük dialect that is spoken in the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey. In addition it has absorbed influences from Greek, Italian and English. Cypriot Turkish is mutually intelligible with Standard Turkish
.

Minority languages

Two minority languages are covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Cyprus, Armenian and Cypriot Arabic.[20]

Armenian

Armenian descent in the Republic. Armenian Cypriots are often bilingual in Greek and Armenian.[3]: 507–509  In 2014, it was reported that there are 668 Armenian first-language speakers in Republic of Cyprus-controlled areas (of a total 1,831 Armenian Cypriots).[21]
: 3 

Cypriot Arabic

Main article: Cypriot Arabic

It is not entirely clear when Arabic first made its way to Cyprus, but Arabic speakers are known to have emigrated from the Levant in the late 12th century AD.

stop voicing opposition. CA has traits in common with some north Syrian and Mesopotamian dialects and sedentary vernaculars spoken on the Levantine coast.[7]: 220–222  Cypriot Arabic has not so far been codified, though there are plans to do so.[22]: 3  In 2014, it was reported that, in the 2011 census, of all 3,656 Maronite Cypriots in Republic of Cyprus-controlled areas "none declared [Cypriot Arabic] to be their first language".[21]
: 4 

Kurbetcha

There is an unknown number of

Kurbetcha (or Gurbetcha), a creole with vocabulary that is predominantly Romani and Cypriot Turkish grammar, residing in Northern Cyprus. Kurbetcha is not protected by the Charter and has been little studied.[3]
: 508–509, 536–537, 549 

Foreign languages

Proficiency in English is high (higher than in many other European countries), and Cypriots that receive education in English might code-switch between their native language and English. English features on road signs, public notices, and in advertisements, etc.[11]: 1888  English was the sole official language during British colonial rule and lingua franca (until 1960) and continued to be used (de facto) in courts of law until 1989 and in legislature until 1963.[4]: 4.4  A reported 80.4% of residents of Cyprus perceive to have command of the English language as L2, a 10.8% of French, a 4.6% of German, a 2.8% of Russian, and a 2.0% of Spanish. On average, Cypriots speak 1.2 foreign languages.[23]: 6  According to the Eurobarometer, 76% of people of Cyprus can speak English, 12% can speak French and 5% can speak German.[24]

Foreign language lessons become compulsory at the age of 9 (2008).[23]: 11 

Extinct languages

The Cypro-Minoan syllabary and earlier languages

It is reckoned written language first made its appearance in Cyprus in the 16th century BCE with the yet-to-be-deciphered Cypro-Minoan syllabary, an offshoot of Linear A "with some additional elements of hieroglyphic affiliation" that was the basis for the later Cypriot syllabary.[25]: 109–110  The Cypro-Minoan syllabary may have been used to write more than one language.[26]: 60ff. 

Arcadocypriot and transitional Greek

The

Byzantine Koine evolved into Cypriot Greek.[10]

Eteocypriot

The Idalion tablet, inscribed in the Cypriot syllabary, from the fifth century BCE. The tablet is named after Idalion or Idalium, one of ten ancient Cypriot city-kingdoms

pre-Indo-European language, indigenous to the island, that competed with Greek following the latter's arrival and was ultimately supplanted by it by the third century BCE. It was written in the Cypriot syllabary that was adopted for Arcadocypriot; the same writing system was used to write both (unrelated) languages. For the time that the two languages co-existed, the peoples of Cyprus were bilingual (and bicultural).[25]
: 115–116 

References

  1. ^ "SPECIAL EUROBAROMETER 386 Europeans and their Languages" (PDF). ec.europa.eu. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-01-06.
  2. ^ The Constitution of the Republic of Cyprus (PDF). 1960. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-12-03. Retrieved 2013-06-26.
  3. ^
    S2CID 143966308
    .
  4. ^ a b c "Cyprus" (PDF). Euromosaic III. Retrieved 3 July 2013.
  5. ^ "Population enumerated by age, sex, language spoken and district (1.10.2011) (sheet D1A)". Population – Country of Birth, Citizenship Category, Country of Citizenship, Language, 2011. CYstat. June 2013.[permanent dead link]
  6. ISBN 9783447052856
    .
  7. ^
    ISBN 1-57506-017-5
    .
  8. ^ "Middle East :: CYPRUS". CIA The World Factbook. 19 July 2022.
  9. ^ Steele Philippa, "The mystery of ancient Cypriot clay balls", British Academy Review, 24, 2014
  10. ^ a b Joseph, Brian D.; Tserdanelis, Georgios (2003). "Modern Greek". In Roelcke, Thorsten (ed.). Variationstypologie. Ein sprachtypologisches Handbuch zu den europäischen Sprachen in Geschichte und Gegenwart / Variation Typology. A Typological Handbook of European Languages. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 823–836.
  11. ^
    ISBN 9783110184181
    .
  12. ^ a b Arvaniti, Amalia (2006). "Erasure as a means of maintaining diglossia in Cyprus". San Diego Linguistic Papers (2). Department of Linguistics, UC San Diego.
  13. doi:10.1075/jgl.8.06ter
    .
  14. ISBN 9781444318920
    .
  15. ^ Arvaniti, Amalia (2010). "Linguistic practices in Cyprus and the emergence of Cypriot Standard Greek" (PDF). Mediterranean Language Review. 17: 15–45.
  16. JSTOR 2844102
    . In Cyprus religious and linguistic divisions do not quite coincide. While many Turks habitually speak Turkish there are 'Turkish', that is, Muslim villages in which the normal language is Greek; among them are Lapithiou (P i), Platanisso (F i), Ayios Simeon (F i) and Galinoporni (F i). This fact has not yet been adequately investigated. With the growth of national feeling and the spread of education the phenomenon is becoming not only rarer but harder to detect. In a Muslim village the school teacher will be a Turk and will teach the children Turkish. They already think of themselves as Turks, and having once learnt the language, will sometimes use it in talking to a visitor in preference to Greek, merely as a matter of national pride. On the other hand many Turks, whose mother tongue is Turkish, learn Greek because they find it useful to understand the language of the majority, though it is much less common for them to write it correctly
  17. ^ Stavroula Varella, Language Contact and the Lexicon in the History of Cypriot Greek, Peter Lang, 2006, p. 64
  18. ^ Ozan Gülle (2014), "Structural Convergence in Cyprus", Inauguraldussertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Philosophie an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen, p. 149: "it is historically well documented that Turkish Cypriots showed large differences in their frequency of communication in Cypriot Greek [...]: On one end of the spectrum are Turkish Cypriots who were probably monolingual Cypriot Greek speakers or had only little competency in Turkish, ..."
  19. ISBN 0-814-74181-9
    .
  20. ^ "Implementation of the Charter in Cyprus". Database for the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Public Foundation for European Comparative Minority Research. Archived from the original on 7 February 2014. Retrieved 26 June 2013.
  21. ^ a b Council of Europe (2014-01-16). European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Fourth periodical presented to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe in accordance with Article 15 of the Charter. CYPRUS (PDF) (Report).
  22. ^ Office of the Law Commissioner (2011). European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Third periodical report by the Republic of Cyprus (PDF) (Report). Council of Europe.
  23. ^ a b Mejer, Lene; Boateng, Sadiq Kwesi; Turchetti, Paolo (2010). "Population and social conditions" (PDF). eurostat. Statistics in Focus (49/2010). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-11-14.
  24. ^ Europeans and their Languages - Eurobarometer, 2006
  25. ^
    ISBN 9783110146516
    .
  26. ISBN 9781107042865
    .

External links
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