Talk:Cypriot Greek

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I think that someone should add a section on the phonology of vowels in Cypriot Greek. Thanks, I'm merely an interested seeker.


1. I disagree strongly with the statement Using dialect conveys no social or educational inferiority. Whoever wrote it - do you live in Cyprus??? It is obviously not true! Αν λαλείς εσούνι αντί εσύ εν φκάλλεις γεναίκα στο Zoo ένεν (-: I believe there was a study at the University of Cyprus which showed speakers of dialect were perceived by Cypriot listeners as being stupider than speakers of kalamaristika.

2. Outside of such settings, however, two Cypriots do not speak Standard Greek with each other. - I think that these settings are related to class (and village/city) factors. I have heard Cypriots doing it. The statement, to me, is also false, because (although we could argue about how rare or often it happens) it is a generalization.

3. No mention of Turkish, Arabic, English, Italian etc loan words, and non-Greek phonemes (j, ch, sh, the french j).

-Taramenos-

On point 3: this is a wiki, go ahead and add information to the article. On points 1,2 : there is social-educational status related to the form of dialect used e.g εσούνι is not popular but τζιαι is etc. But who would use standard greek in everyday conversation? A softcore version of the dialect is not standard greek! Mavros 14:15, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Mavre: I dont understand what you mean by "social-educational status" and how it is linked to the εσούνι/τζαι example.

For But who would use standard greek in everyday conversation?: Hypothetically, we have a continuum from the most 'proper' (acrolect) to the most 'χωρκάτικα' (basilect). Example: Πήγαινε (Δημοτική).

Πήγαιννε (softcore. this is how e.g. a G/C politician would say it).

Πήαιννε (γ deletion. This is already a marker of cypriotness and would not be used in more upper-class circles).

Πάειννε (hardcore).

The softcore version of the dialect is not standard greek - Standard Greek as such only exists in text or non-conversational contexts like lectures, courts, the news etc, whether we are talking about Greece or Cyprus - but the softcore version is a marker of economic class, education and being from the city (εσούνι is not popular in Nicosia for example but in some areas it is normal, or at least it was before the effects of the media and schools). What is considered normal/correct in more educated and high-class urban circles is directly influenced by being more Greek and less χωρκάτικο. The prestige of these circles affects the norms of society in general. That is what I was trying to say in the 2nd point. When I wrote it I was thinking specifically of watching parents talking καλαμαρίστικα to their children in a park in Nicosia. Havent you observed similar behaviour?

Taramenos Mar 7

Feel free to make changes (be bold). Mentioning diglossia and foreign influences was quite a good change. And register a username so that we can have this discussion in your talk page rather than filling up the talk page of the article. Πρόσεχε α, είμαι λεμεσιανός! Mavros 23:58, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

--- May 15th: Whoever added the dictionary, it is not a good idea. There are real dictionaries and they are book size. Also some of the words I have never heard (Eshw, koritsa). The dictionary here is very very bad. Greek Mia hara Cypriot Mia hara. It is a joke, Whoever did it does not know good greek or cypriot. I am deleting it.

Well Mavros if you feel like that, please add a real Cypriot dictionary so that all Cypriots can enjoy and learn from it. My Cypriot would be much different to yours, I've learnt it off people 75+, and Pafites and Pitsiles, so forgive me.

People please sign so that we can have a decent conversation. I didn't delete any dictionary. Somebody deleted the hiphop reference, why? Mavros 18:25, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] ta korakistika? ;)

Afiste to hip-hop mian pantan, eksiasete "eshievereven" hahaha!

P.S. if you want to learn the cypriot dialect, try visiting it for instance, you can't get this right without a vocal hearing. If you're going to add words, add only a few important ones, because this isn't a dictionary website :\ (unless you succeed into making the dictionary a nice part of the article hehe). You might as well start adding words in wiktionary.--www.doc 12:15, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposals for working on this page

Today is July 21st. I propose anyone who is interested in changing the article we talk about it a little and set a date, say in 6 months, by which we can work at achieving the goals. My thoughts: 1) technical linguistic description. I just added some stuff in a new syntax section (moved 'εν' there as well). How detailed do we want to get? I could go to the library and get the books and type up characteristics of syntax, morphology and phonology; it would take me a few hours and that is fine with me. Ideally do we think it should achieve the same level of technical description as the Greek language entry? Not likely but a nice idea! The phonology section is good. Morphology needs work. All could do with work.

2) sociology. For example Αντρέας Παναγιώτου has suggested that the "dialect" is in fact a language in more than one article. I think this might be good to add, not as fact but to show that the opinion exists. Generally going through the literature (which is quite small) and writing up shot references bit by bit. Maybe adding some better descriptions of where it is used and has been used. e.g. television, radio, print, ποιητάρηδες, etc.

3) An overview of different writing formats used.

4) Links. Maybe we should link to other sites with some examples of cypriot greek, such as blogs etc.

5) References would be good. Whatever we cannot explain in enough detail, at least the reader can find out where to learn.

6) Slowly translating the article to Greek.

Taramenos

And can someone give me an example of: "Present participles ending in -οντα instead of Modern Greek -οντας." For example if I think of Modern Greek "μιλόντας των παιδιών", I have not heard "μιλόντα των παιθκιών". Have I misunderstood this? Or is it basilect I have not heard? I am 27 from Nicosia.


Thinking about it (maybe I am wrong) it seems that we Cypriots have a tendency to avoid the 'present participle' and use other strategies to express the same meaning? e.g "σαν εμίλουν των παιθκιών". Otherwise I just hear or use the Modern Greek -οντας.


I have another proposal:

7) Any discussion about the technical features should be in Cypriot Greek? Anyone who has anything to contribute would know it anyway? Άτε.

Taramenos (July 21st 2006)

Typical example: "emeinamen haskonta", I've also heard and used "stekonta" and you can find more examples in literature : "Eto pou sou katevika pale traoudistonta" (Mihailidis). I think -onta is also used in Griko (Southern Italy).But yes, this is gradually being replaced by the standard modern greek, and yes, people tend to avoid using participles.
1. Don't know enough linguistics to have an opinion, but more detail is always a good thing.
2 &5. Interesting thoughts, again a good idea to provide references (e.g. Yiangoullis for an anthology of poiitarides).
3. Sure
4. Links with caution, it's better to have links just about the dialect itself and have links about poets, writers, hip hop groups etc in the corresponding pages.
I disagree with 7, since this is the english language wikipedia other users with any knowledge of linguistics etc should be able to read the talk page and know what's going on (just my opinion anyway, not sure if there's a wikipedia policy). Mavros 14:38, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
interesting about haskonta/haskontas.
4 there are some links on the greek wikipedia entry, I have not checked them all out yet. (The greek wikipedia entry has improved a lot in the last months by the way)
for references a good start would be a dictionary (Yiangoullis has one, there are more), and a grammar.
You have convinced me about 7. As for 4 extra links never hurt anyone.
Gennika miloumen ta pou konta.

Taramenos 17:38, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] τζείνος, -η, -ο -- Is it really a syntactic characteristic of Cypriot Greek?

I am not Greek or Cypriot and have never been to Cyprus. I am merely an amateur linguist who has studied modern Greek, so please forgive me if this suggestion sounds absurd...

In the syntax section, it is mentionned that there is a demonstrative, τζείνος, which corresponds to "that there". It seems to me however, that this exists in standard δημοτική, in the form of (ε)κείνος, and that the Cypriot τζείνος is simply the result of palatalisation, parallel to και --> τζιαι. Is τζείνος is syntactically or semantically different from κείνος in any way? If not, maybe it would be more correct to move this up to the phonology section.

Daniel, 15:12, 30 July 2006 (NZT)


Yes τζείνος functions as εκείνος both semantically and syntactically. I left it in syntax with a note that it is the same as εκείνος and also added it to the palatalisation rule as another example. --Taramenos 11:48, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Literature

Can anybody write a few words about poetry in the Cypriot Greek dialect?

Here is a start:

Ἀντάν κ̌ί' ἀρκέψαν οἱ κρυφοί ἀνέμοι κ̌ί' ἐφυσούσαν
κ̌ί' ἀρκίνησεν εἴς τήν Τουρκ̌ιάν νά κρυφοσυνεφκιάζη
κ̌αί πού τές τέσσερεις μερκές τά νέφη ἐκουβαλούσαν,
ώστι νά κάμουν τόν κ̌αιρόν ν' ἀρκεύκη νά στοιβάζη,
εἴχ̌εν σγιάν εἴχαν οὕλοι τοῦς κ̌ι ἡ Ǩύπρου τό κρυφόν τῆς
μέσ' στοῦς ἀνέμους τοῦς κρυφούς εἴχ̌εν τό μερτικόν τῆς.
κ̌ί' ἀντάν ἐφάνην ἡ στραπή εἴς τοῦ Μοριά τά μέρη
κ̌ί' ἐξάπλωσεν κ̌ι' ἀκούστηκεν παντού ἡ πουμπουρκά τῆς,
κ̌ί' οὕλα ξηλαμπρακ̌ίσασιν κ̌αί θάλασσα κ̌αί ξέρη
εἴχ̌εν σγιάν εἴχαν οὕλοι τοῦς κ̌ἰ' ἡ Ǩύπρου τά κακά τῆς.
Ἑννάτη Ἰουλίου, Βασίλης Μιχαηλίδης

Please correct my polytonic. If someone can find a refence and check if this is exactly how Basilns Mixanlidns wrote it I would appreciate it. thanks. --Kupirijo 08:41, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

---

Kuprijo your additions in morphology and phonology are really good, you have really raised the standard of the article. (ένιωθα πολλά λλίος για τα λάθη μου, τέλος πάντων...)

For some reason I cannot read a lot of the letters, they look like squares instead. Do I need to install fonts?

For poetry I am no expert. What do you think needs to be added?

I have been reading some Lipertis and noticed that the Cypriot consonants are notated by apostrophes, σ' is sh, τσ' is ch, τζ' is j. Will add more later.

--Taramenos 11:13, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

  • Hello Taramenos. Can you be a bit more specific? Is it polytonic in general that does not show, or is it just the carons  ̌? I use Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux and I can see them with no problem (without installing any fonts). What operating system are you using? --Kupirijo 19:14, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Oh and another thing, does Lipertis use polytonic? I am assuming so, right? We could use σ̌ τσ̌ and τζ̌ but I prefer the χ̌ (for χ and σ), χ̌χ̌ (for σκ), κ̌κ̌ and κ̌ instead. I definitely think we should add some sort of literature excerpt like other pages do. That is why I thought Basilns Mixanlidns was a good example. It is such a classic. If you prefer Lipertis let me know. Cheers. --Kupirijo 19:14, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

2. Yes he uses polytonic. I have no preference for a poet, but for now most of the vowels look like squares for me. I just mentioned lipertis because we had talked about describing different writing systems. --Taramenos 09:04, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I fixed the fonts don't worry i can see everything now :) --Taramenos 21:32, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Excellent! I was going to recommend using Firefox. It is a much better web browser in my opinion. --Kupirijo 22:07, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lets add some words

Perhaps rather than just the technical aspects of the language

up to say 30 examples of standard greek, cypriot greek and its english transliteration should be added in table form, so people can gauge an understanding of the technicalities. For example, Kefali=Kelle/Tzefali=Head


Hello. I updated the hip-hop section of Music_of_Cyprus and added a link from this article. Also I removed the link to the interview with HCH because my putting it here in the first place was not objective. But I think it is important that this article includes some links to pages in cypriot, both modern and older (eg poetry as Kupirijo suggested).Taramenos 04:34, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ζ

The article said that doubled consonants are pronounced geminated in Cypriot Greek. What about ζ? Is it pronounced [zz] too? - Gilgamesh 22:02, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

It depends. ζ is pronounced as zz in certain words such as ζιω/ζ'ω (I/to live) and is pronounced as z in words such as αζούλα (jealousy). WhiteMagick 10:08, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Is it άδρωπος or άχρωπος?

This article gives two different outcomes of the ancient Greek word for human only a few lines apart. Which one is the correct one? Or are they both correct? Haplolology Talk/Contributions 23:23, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

That is a very good question. The answer is complicated. άδρωπος can be considered to be the cypriot word for male human being and the word άχρωπος can be seen as the word for human being. The former derived from the greek word άνδρας while the latter originating from Greek for άνθρωπος where according to Cypriot word formation the v is dropped and θ becomes χ as in the Greek θέλω (I/to want) which is in Cypriot is χιέλω. I intend to spend a great deal of time reworking this article because not only it is poor but it contains innaccuracies. For example the table for personal pronouns is mixed with demonstrative pronouns. User:Whitemagick 10:04 21 April 2008.