Кипрский греческий язык: особенности и история развития

Modern Greek language variety spoken by Greek Cypriots

Cypriot Greek (κυπριακή ελληνική or κυπριακά ) 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 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.

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). 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. Greek speaking Cypriot society is diglossic, 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".

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 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 Cypriot community, especially after the end of Ottoman control and consequent British administration of the island. 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 mother tongue 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 Dimiourgoi Neas Antilipsis (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 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest features actor Jimmy Roussounis arguing in Cypriot with another crew member speaking Kibrizlija (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 other only variety of Modern Greek apart from Standard 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.

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 ever been attempted only once, by , but parts of it are now contested.

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). Geminates are 1.5 to 2 times longer than singletons, depending, primarily, on position and stress. Geminates occur both word initially and word medially. Word initial geminates tend to be somewhat longer. have found that "for stops, in particular, this lengthening affects both closure duration and VOT", but claim that stops contrast only in aspiration, and not duration. undertook a perceptual study with thirty native speakers of Cypriot Greek, 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.

Cypriot Greek has a five vowel system that is nearly identical to that of Standard Modern 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 yers), and are sometimes elided altogether (5% of all cases). In glide less analyses, may alternate with or , e. g. "cage" → "cages", or "koulouri" → "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 has "dynamic" stress. Both consonants and vowels are longer in stressed than in unstressed syllables, and the effect is stronger word initially. There is only one stress per word, and it can fall on any of the last four syllables. Stress on the fourth last syllable in a word is rare and normally limited to certain verb forms. Because of that possibility, however, when words with antepenultimate stress are followed by an enclitic in Cypriot Greek, no extra stress is added unlike Standard Modern Greek in which stress falls only on one of the last three syllables), e. g. Cypriot Greek το ποδήλατον μου , Standard Modern Greek το ποδήλατό μου "my bicycle".

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

Much of the Cypriot core vocabulary is different from the modern standard's, e. g. συντυχάννω in addition to μιλώ "I talk", θωρώ 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?" which makes its closest translation to the English "whence" which is also archaic in most of the English speaking world. Ethnologue reports that the lexical similarity between Cypriot Greek and Demotic Greek is in the range of 84–93%.

There is no established orthography for Cypriot Greek. 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 , by the authors of the "Syntychies" lexicographic database at the University of Cyprus. When diacritics are not used, an epenthetic —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 παντζάρι → Cypriot Greek ππαντζιάρι , Standard Modern Greek χέρι → Cypriot Greek σιέρι
Geminates (and aspirates) are represented by two of the same letter, e. g. σήμμερα "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 ).