http://www.cypriotacademy.com
(I am not in any way connected with it by the way)
Contains many sections and I see that it has become the home of Andrikos the London Fish Fryer.
Here's a bit from the section "Our Language" which clearly refers to Cypriot as a language and not a dialect or idiom. A provocation to some I suspect.
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The principal Cypriot vernacular contains many distinct forms of archaic origin not found in the present-day language of Greece. In addition the serial occupations endured by Cypriots over the centuries have left their mark in the form of a vivid multicultural vocabulary: extensive Ottoman, English, French, Italian and other foreign influences have been absorbed to create a powerfully evocative and expressive language. Spoken throughout Cyprus for many generations, Cypriot is also familiar to expatriate Cypriots in the UK, Australia, America and elsewhere.
Important historic texts have been written in what is essentially Cypriot, notably the Assizes (the laws introduced to the island by the Crusaders in the Middle Ages) and Leontios Makhairas’s Chronicle of Cyprus in Frankish times. Despite this, and despite a rich poetic and folk tradition, Cypriot has never achieved proper recognition as a written language variety in its own right. Cypriot has been in decline since the 1950s as a result of the polarisation of the ‘Greek’ and ‘Turkish’ communities of Cyprus. Divisive educational policies and the media have marginalised Cypriot, as well as Gibrizlija, in favour of standardised language forms from the respective ‘mainlands’.
The diminished status of the Cypriot language most particularly affects the newer generations of international Cypriots, who find themselves alienated from their mother tongue. When they try to learn the language of their parents and grandparents, they are introduced to unfamiliar ‘correct’ forms. They are made to feel ashamed of the supposedly vulgar way they speak at home. Not surprisingly, many Cypriots brought up outside Cyprus are unable to communicate effectively or confidently in their ancestral language.
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The above did strike a personal chord with me and perhaps will with others here. I don't speak the CY language terribly well and on many occasions been told that I speak it with an English accent and there have been times when the more rightish-wing, more patriotic friends and relations (the sort who like their coffees in the kafenia bedecked with those funny little blue and white flags) try and correct my vocabulary and as the extract above says the CY language is seen by some as something to be looked down on.
A vulgar language? Vernacular? Well CY has certainly been the local language for hundred of years and like all living languages it will contain vulgar words for a straight-talking people. A living language which has taken on vocabulary from all the Invading Powers and one which, like English, has never been codified or state controlled.
State controlled? Well not entirely true. It has been controlled in that the State(s!) advances the teaching of the "motherland" languages in CY schools, on State(s!) TV and Radio and if the Language is neglected, it is state-control by another route.
In many other countries around the World such a threatened Language would be cherished and protected by more enlightened peoples and governments. Indeed I think UNESCO (?) have a programme for protecting Endangered Languages. I am unsure as to whether CY is on that list or not.
The older tissies I know speak the Language and I have bumped in to younger tissies who also speak It's a People's Language, potentially also a Shared Language again. A Unifying Language.
(PS apologies for not speaking about Gibrizlija and Sanna - more on the site referenced above)
(PPS - there's an excellent section on CY sayings and phrases on the site)
