Cypriot Turkish

Cypriot Turkish () is a dialect of the Turkish language spoken by Turkish Cypriots both in Cyprus and in the diaspora.

History

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. It is understood by expatriate Cypriots living in the UK, United States, Australia and other parts of the world.

Cypriot Turkish consists of a blend of Ottoman Turkish and the 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.

Since the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Turkish is found almost exclusively in Northern Cyprus, which is home to approximately 300,000 native Turkish speakers (including varieties of Turkish other than Cypriot) as of 2016 and 1,400 speakers in the south as of 2013. Of these, a significant number are immigrants from Turkey who do not speak the Cypriot variety of Turkish. Cypriot Turkish is not used officially in the north, where modern standard Turkish became the de facto official language of schools, government, and the media.

Phonology

Differences between standard Turkish and Cypriot Turkish

Cypriot Turkish is distinguished by a number of sound alternations not found in standard Turkish, but some of which are also quite common in other Turkish vernaculars:

• Voicing of some unvoiced stops
  • t↔d, k↔g

Standard Turkish ↔ Cypriot Turkish "stone"

Standard Turkish ↔ Cypriot Turkish "wolf"

Standard Turkish ↔ Cypriot Turkish "potato"

• Preservation of earlier Turkic

Standard Turkish ↔ Cypriot Turkish "how are you?"

Standard Turkish ↔ Cypriot Turkish "thousand"

Standard Turkish: ↔ Cypriot Turkish: "getting in the car"

• Changing 1st person plural suffix
  • z↔k

Standard Turkish ↔ Cypriot Turkish "we want"

• Unvoicing of some voiced stops
  • b↔p

Standard Turkish: ↔ Cypriot Turkish: "broad beans"

• Lenition of final affricates
  • ç () ↔ ş ()

Standard Turkish ↔ Cypriot Turkish "no, none"

The last two alternations are more specific to Cypriot Turkish and are seen less often in other Turkish vernacular.

Consonants

Cypriot Turkish consonants are mostly the same as standard Turkish consonants. However, Cypriot Turkish has retained the phonemes and , whereas standard Turkish lost them.

Consonant phonemes

	Labial		Alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Plosive	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Affricate					Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Fricative	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Nasal	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link				Template:IPA link
Flap/Tap			Template:IPA link
Lateral			Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Semivowel					Template:IPA link

Vowels

	front		back
	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
high	Template:IPA link (i)	Template:IPA link (ü)	Template:IPA link (ı)	Template:IPA link (u)
mid/low	Template:IPA link (e)	Template:IPA link (ö)	Template:IPA link (a)	Template:IPA link (o)

Grammar

Cypriot Turkish is structured as a VO language as opposed to standard Turkish which is an OV language. It is very typical in forming a question.

• Standard Turkish is, in Cypriot Turkish, ("Will you go to school?")

Cypriot Turkish uses the aorist tense instead of the present simple tense, and very often in place of the future tense as well.

• Standard Turkish or ("I am going to school") are, in Cypriot Turkish, ("I go to school" / "I am going to school" / "I will go to school")

Cypriot Turkish does not use the narrative/indefinite past, and only uses the simple past instead.

• Standard Turkish ("He is reported to have gone home") is, in Cypriot Turkish, not used. Instead or ("He went home") suffices.

Cypriot Turkish also lacks the question suffix of . This is similar to colloquial Azerbaijani.

• Standard Turkish ("Is your mother at home?") is, in Cypriot Turkish,

In Cypriot Turkish, the reflexive pronoun in third person is different, namely ("him, himself, them, themself"). In Standard Turkish, this would be .

Semantics

Typical questions usually do not qualify as standard Turkish questions (see the example above) because question suffixes are usually dropped by native Turkish Cypriots. Another subtle difference is the emphasis on verbs.

See also

• Languages of Cyprus

External links

• List of Cypriot Turkish Vocabulary (in Turkish)
• Turkish Cypriot Idioms Search Engine