Cyprus-Forum.com

[halil]

Pictures from books Nostalji Gonyeli 1,2,3
by Ahmet ÖMERAGA

[halil]

Pictures from books Nostalji Gonyeli 1,2,3
by Ahmet ÖMERAGA
(2)

[LENA]

[denizaksulu]

Lena, the songs are as lovely as the pictures.

Thanks

[LENA]

Those are recent ones!

[Hazza]

Both of these are amazing, brilliant work Lena

[T_C]

Wow! Well done Lena mou...I love it!

[LENA]

Thank you for your good words Hazza , Deniz and T_C! I am glad you enjoyed it!

[Natty]

To all here,

The village of Limnia near Agios Sergios, north of Famagusta was a famed horse breeding area in Cyprus. Does anyone have pictures of horses from there? It would be interesting to see the kind of horse bred in Cyprus before the advent of the car and truck.

Nikitas

Hi Nikitas, my Grandmothers family actually comes from Limnia, and although my father was born in England he spent most of his childhood growing up with his grandparents in the village. I asked him about the horses and unfortunately he doesn't have any pictures but he does remember that a lot of the horses bred were actually race horses and that the man who used to Breed them was, if I remember correctly, known as 'O Mavros', I’m not too sure why, he thinks it was something to do with the horses. He also said that apparently the horses were fed on cornflakes, although I don't know whether that was just village gossip or actually true, you never know with us Cypriots...

It was so great seeing his face light up when I asked him, the memories of his childhood spent in Cyprus always bring a big smile to his face..

[Natty]

GR,

Talking about indigenous people around the Mediterranean is a risky enterprise! Are the southern Italians indigenous? I have been there and found it very easy to communicate in Cypriot dialect. Yet most of them and most other Italians class them as indigenous!

I read recently that in southern Italy there is a small community of Greek Italians, and as far as I can tell the local dialect sounds quite similar to the Cypriot dialect..

Greek in Italy

There are two distinct Greek-language communities in southern Italy, where Greek presence is older than the Roman empire itself. Then, the whole region was called Magna Grecia. Nowadays, there are two Greek pockets in the area, the Grecia Salentina area in Apulia where they speak the dialect called Griko; and the Bovesia area, in Calabria.

Griko

In Apulia (Puglia in Italian), in the Grecia Salentina area, there are 15,000 people who speak Griko (1994). In some towns they are now a minority (Soleto, Sternatia...) but the ugly thing is that they are generally old speakers, so Griko is "seriously endagered".There is now a new law that protect this language, but maybe it's too late. Anyway, there are young people learning like our informer Francesco Penza. We display here 3 distinct tables for Griko

Graecanic, Calabrian Greek

In the Bovesia area, in Calabria, they speak Calabrian Greek or Graecanic in five towns. 200 years ago, there were some 20 greek-speaking towns there, but now there are around 5,000 speakers, mostly over 50 years old, in the five towns listed in our table. Unlike in Grecia Salentina in Calabria the orthodox church is alive, with its see at Bova. Calabria is also home to other minorities, actual language islands: Valdesian Occitans and

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/9479/griko.html

http://www.rootsworld.com/griko/