Sep 15, 2026 · 31 min · 10 segments
If you ever wanted to learn Cypriot Greek, it's never been easier. Cyprusays® is a language learning app designed to help learners speak Cypriot Greek naturally and confidently. In this Special…
Effie AthanassiouGuest
Costas AthanassiouGuestAndreasHostSo why do you think Cypriot Greek has been sort of underrepresented in language education? I mean, what's your take on that?
Yeah, so it's interesting because we kind of came to that understanding through our discussions with our linguists once we started figuring out who to contact and where to start with Cyprus is.
We got in touch with the linguists, Spiros is one of them, Spiros Amostis among a few others, and they've obviously studied the matter quite deeply and they know that it's, I mean, look, there's political reasons, I'm sure, there's governments that kind of dictate when a language should or shouldn't be you know considered a national language for a country and things like that so we've we've focused more on uh preserving it and kind of keeping it alive for future generations but i guess the surprising thing for us i mean for me i guess when we started looking into this further was that it's it's not taught in schools and it's um standard greek is used formally throughout cyprus and Cypriot Greek is only used colloquially or at home or you know casually and and that was quite surprising which which kind of gave us even though we're already pretty motivated to get it done and and build this it was kind of like well now we actually have to because if no one's ever done it before and and and there's you know there's political reasons and you know historical reasons why language hasn't been standardized like that or the dialect hasn't been standardized yeah i think it was it was it was quite important for us to continue with that and you know i'm sure everyone's got their take on it and that was never a focus for us as to why it hasn't been but it is what it is i guess yeah
what were some of the biggest challenges or some of the biggest linguistic challenges in formalizing a dialect that hasn't traditionally been taught in the classroom into your app
And there was all these meme pages, comical pages, and things like that, which is great, which everybody loves and has a good laugh.
And I love all that sort of stuff, too, because that was the most I could find when I was looking to learn.
And it was just, you can't learn off a meme page and just look at how are you going to learn from that sort of stuff.
I've got books from my dad that are separate books about the language and things like that.
And if you can't read it and you can't start from zero to start to learn, it's just you're either there's books for people who really understand it and can read it and then there's like nothing for people in – in the beginning stage unless you live there and you just hear it growing up so there was just a lot of thought about talking to the linguist team because we wanted to make sure that it wasn't just on my mum says this and my dad says that which there's so much depth in the language from what people's not families know and all that side of it as well but it was just we wanted to have that academic standing behind us as well that it was not just you know i heard that my uncle said this that collection of everybody's thoughts we wanted to have that linguist team behind us to just sort of say this is what we've studied this is what is you know mapped against we've sort of mapped it against the common european framework for languages so they've mapped out our content against that structure so it's it was just making it they're like it's a big task when we met with them on our zoom calls they're like this is going to be a big job but we're like yeah but that doesn't scare us we really want to do it and they were like yeah we do too so it's really good to have a team of people that had that same passion because they've heard it from other people too because they're in the in the universities um they're lecturers and professors and things like that so they were just like we've heard so many people ask us for this and the fact that you guys are in australia and you guys want to make this happen they were on board and and they were just there was a connection straight away with the team
So why do you think Cypriot Greek has been sort of underrepresented in language education? I mean, what's your take on that?
Yeah, so it's interesting because we kind of came to that understanding through our discussions with our linguists once we started figuring out who to contact and where to start with Cyprus is.
We got in touch with the linguists, Spiros is one of them, Spiros Amostis among a few others, and they've obviously studied the matter quite deeply and they know that it's, I mean, look, there's political reasons, I'm sure, there's governments that kind of dictate when a language should or shouldn't be you know considered a national language for a country and things like that so we've we've focused more on uh preserving it and kind of keeping it alive for future generations but i guess the surprising thing for us i mean for me i guess when we started looking into this further was that it's it's not taught in schools and it's um standard greek is used formally throughout cyprus and Cypriot Greek is only used colloquially or at home or you know casually and and that was quite surprising which which kind of gave us even though we're already pretty motivated to get it done and and build this it was kind of like well now we actually have to because if no one's ever done it before and and and there's you know there's political reasons and you know historical reasons why language hasn't been standardized like that or the dialect hasn't been standardized yeah i think it was it was it was quite important for us to continue with that and you know i'm sure everyone's got their take on it and that was never a focus for us as to why it hasn't been but it is what it is i guess yeah
what were some of the biggest challenges or some of the biggest linguistic challenges in formalizing a dialect that hasn't traditionally been taught in the classroom into your app
And there was all these meme pages, comical pages, and things like that, which is great, which everybody loves and has a good laugh.
And I love all that sort of stuff, too, because that was the most I could find when I was looking to learn.
And it was just, you can't learn off a meme page and just look at how are you going to learn from that sort of stuff.
I've got books from my dad that are separate books about the language and things like that.
And if you can't read it and you can't start from zero to start to learn, it's just you're either there's books for people who really understand it and can read it and then there's like nothing for people in – in the beginning stage unless you live there and you just hear it growing up so there was just a lot of thought about talking to the linguist team because we wanted to make sure that it wasn't just on my mum says this and my dad says that which there's so much depth in the language from what people's not families know and all that side of it as well but it was just we wanted to have that academic standing behind us as well that it was not just you know i heard that my uncle said this that collection of everybody's thoughts we wanted to have that linguist team behind us to just sort of say this is what we've studied this is what is you know mapped against we've sort of mapped it against the common european framework for languages so they've mapped out our content against that structure so it's it was just making it they're like it's a big task when we met with them on our zoom calls they're like this is going to be a big job but we're like yeah but that doesn't scare us we really want to do it and they were like yeah we do too so it's really good to have a team of people that had that same passion because they've heard it from other people too because they're in the in the universities um they're lecturers and professors and things like that so they were just like we've heard so many people ask us for this and the fact that you guys are in australia and you guys want to make this happen they were on board and and they were just there was a connection straight away with the team
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.