Mikiko wrote:There was a discussion on this on TV . If anyone considers what he is taught at school and what he speaks at home or at work its two different languages with different words not the same - . At school you use the DImotiki but at home or with friends you use your own languages not the one who is taught at school . this is the distorrted version of our language.
I dont know any Cypriot who use at home or in cafes the language with same as he is taught at school unless of course he lives in another planet . At home he use a mixture of words including arabic italian , turkish and many more other foreign words. we have thousands of foreign words in our own languages that does not appear in the greek language.
This is the stupidity of our system which uses two rules and two set of histories to explain the people on this island . and its not a suprise that we are divided its this attitude that brought the partition of the island. Well Done no other country on this planet could have achieved this ..we are unique in everything we do.
Cypriot is a Greek dialect and accent, not a different language. Different dialects exist among most languages.
For English, the equivalent of standard Greek as taught in schools would be Queen's English, or standard English. I can understand perfectly standard English as spoken by say BBC News presenters and I can also perfectly understand the American dialect of English. But when common people from the UK (especially certain parts) talk, I understand almost nothing from what they say. I remember watching BBC some time ago and they had subtitles for when an Indian person was talking in English. This is just for English. Other languages, e.g. German, have even more variability among the dialects.
About foreign words in our language this is a common thing for
all languages. Think how many Greeks words there are in English for example. Similarly Greek has borrowed many words from many other languages. This is perfectly natural and is true for Greek in general, not just for the Cypriot dialect.
If you want to educate yourselves on the subject, then I would suggest to download "Modern Greek dialects" by Peter Trudgill by following the link below.
Greek dialects
So in Cyprus we wrote in the Minoan language for like 3 centuries and then in Greek for 32 centuries.
