*NEW EPISODE!* 55. The Grenglish Project: Cypriot Greek in the Diaspora with Anna Charalambidou and Petros Karatsareas

So alongside their culture, of course Cypriots bring language.

Many people assume that heritage, that a heritage language freezes in diaspora.

How common is this perception among the Cypriot community?

I mean, there's an element of that, some aspects of the Greek Cypriot language when transported to the UK froze.

So that's why we and I find different local variations that in Cyprus no longer exist.

But I think this idea of the heritage language freezes is more perhaps visible back home to Cyprus when the Greek Cypriots of the UK go back home and then the Cypriots that still live in Cyprus notice differences in how they speak and that's when this idea that they speak an older type of Cypriot Greek arises.

But I think obviously the community that is here in the UK, they maintain some of the older forms of Cypriot Greek that perhaps are now obsolete in Cyprus, but also they have new elements.

So it doesn't freeze in a sense that it never evolves.

the language keeps evolving, but it maintains some features that, but it evolves in different ways than in Cyprus.

So some of the features that exist in Cyprus don't exist here and the other way around.

For those who aren't familiar with Cypriot Greek and for those listeners who might not be familiar with Greek at all, could you explain some of the key features for listeners who aren't familiar with the language?

So Greek is one of the two official languages of Cyprus, the other being Turkish.

And the way Greek is taught at schools is very similar to standard modern Greek spoken in Greece.

So the language, the formal language of education, of media, of policy documents, of literature is similar.

There's some small difference, very similar.

However, the language used for everyday spoken communication and for some media interactions, perhaps more humorous, is different.

It's commonly described as a dialect.

So Cypriot Greek is different from standard modern Greek in various aspects.

so there are different sounds in Cypriot Greek that don't exist in Standard Modern Greek, like , , double consonants like .

All the sounds don't exist in Standard Modern Greek.

The vocabulary can have some differences, so of course there's a lot of commonalities, but also words that can be a bit different in the Cypriot dialect compared to Standard Modern Greek.

like meno in Standard Modern Greek, but menisko in Secret Greek.

All words that can be completely different between Standard Modern Greek and Secret Greek.

And also syntax, so the word order can be different.

So in Standard Modern Greek, we might say, muarese, I like.