The Case of Cyprus*

Perceptions of difference in the Greek sphere The case of Cyprus* Marina Terkourafi University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Cypriot Greek has been cited as “the last surviving Modern Greek dialect” (Con- tossopoulos 1969:92, 2000:21), and differences between it and Standard Modern Greek are often seen as seriously disruptive of communication by Mainland and Cypriot Greeks alike. This paper attempts an anatomy of the linguistic ‘difference’ of the Cypriot variety of Greek. By placing this in the wider context of the history of Cypriot Greek, the study and current state of other Modern Greek dialects, and state and national ideology in the two countries, Greece and Cyprus, it is possible to identify both diachronic and synchronic, as well as structural and ideological factors as constitutive of this difference. Keywords: Modern Greek dialects, language attitudes, ideology, identity, Cypriot Greek 1. Introduction: Gauging the difference A question frequently asked of the linguist who studies the Cypriot variety of Greek is “Why is Cypriot Greek so different?”1 The sheer phrasing of this question betrays some of its implicit assumptions: ‘different’ being a two-place predicate, the designation of Cypriot Greek as ‘different’ points to the existence of a second term to which Cypriot Greek is being implicitly compared. This second term is, of course, Standard Modern Greek (henceforth SMG), which, nevertheless, being ‘Standard,’ also represents the norm — or, if you prefer, the yardstick — by which divergences are measured. As Matsuda (1991, cited in Lippi Green 1997:59) points out, “[w]hen the parties are in a relationship of domination and subordination, we tend to say that the dominant is normal, and the subordinate is different from normal” (emphasis added). Lippi-Green (ibid.) concurs: “The termstandard itself does much to promote this idea: we speak of one standard and in opposition, non- standard or substandard” (original emphasis; cf. Moschonas 2005:292).2 Journal of Greek Linguistics 8 (2007), 60–96. doi 10.1075/jgl.8.06ter issn 1566–5844 / e-issn 1569–9856 © John Benjamins PublishingDownloaded Company from Brill.com09/26/2021 04:46:58AM via free access Perceptions of difference in the Greek sphere 61 Comments or questions along these lines, as well as reports of communication failures between Cypriot and Mainland Greeks abound in informal discussions between linguists and non-linguists alike.3 Moreover, such comments are not re- stricted to lay discourse, but are also found in scholarly publications remarking on the “phonetic peculiarity” and “hard to understand” or “deviant” nature of Cypriot speech (e.g., Contossopoulos 2000:24–25; Ralli 2006:123). In other words, it’s of- ficial: Cypriot Greek is different, sometimes to the point of incomprehensibility. At the same time, one must acknowledge that this incomprehensibility goes only one way (cf. Newton 1972b:19): it is only Cypriot Greek which may fail to be understood by speakers of other varieties of Greek.4 Speakers of the standard, on the other hand, have no difficulty making themselves understood by Greek Cypri- ots. Asymmetrical intelligibility between Cypriot and SMG would, at first glance, seem to make this a case of dialect-to-standard relationship (Hudson 1996:36). However, the historical and political context of language use in Cyprus makes this question anything but straightforward to answer. The formation of the Cypriot dialect is roughly placed between the 7th and 14th centuries CE, slightly pre-dating that of the other Modern Greek dialects, which are collectively traced back to the Hellenistic koiné and associated with the diminishing influence of Constantinople (Tzitzilis 2000; Ralli 2006:123; see also Section 3 below). However, unlike most other Modern Greek dialects, Cypriot re- mained outside the confines of the modern Greek state when this was established in the 1830s, and during its subsequent expansion to its present borders in 1948. And while Cypriot is not alone in this respect — the Greek varieties of the Pon- tus, Cappadocia and Southern Italy have, most famously, shared this fate — it is certainly unique in being the first language of the majority of the population in a country other than Greece, as is the case since Cyprus was declared an indepen- dent Republic in 1960.5 These historical and political circumstances set the scene, I claim, for both Mainland and Cypriot Greeks’ perceptions of Cypriot Greek as ‘different.’ Al- though this difference is frequently reified and taken for granted, it nevertheless relies on two rather dubious premises. The first is a sweeping generalization about the nature of the two varieties at hand, namely that each is sufficiently homo- geneous internally to remain distinct from the other. Only if one takes SMG to be a well-circumscribed variety that does not overlap with Cypriot Greek, and vice versa, can one compare the two. However, as any (socio-)linguist would read- ily concur, internal homogeneity is a myth that capitalizes on “shared forgetting,” a notion proposed as central to the social constitution of nationhood at least as much as shared memories (Joseph 2004:114, original emphasis; cf. Moschonas 2005:296). This view, then, overlooks both the variability within each variety — along geographical and social axes for SMG, to which an acrolectal vs. basilectal Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 04:46:58AM via free access 62 Marina Terkourafi axis is added for Cypriot Greek (on which see Katsoyannou et al. 2006) — as well as a great deal of commonalities between them (e.g., overall patterns in morpholo- gy and syntax, not to mention a great number of lexical items). In sum, any discus- sion of the difference between SMG and Cypriot Greek presupposes abstracting away from the facts on the ground by both glossing over internal differences and ignoring external commonalities. And while this abstraction will be frequently called into question in this article — for instance, when discussing the various elements combining in contemporary Cypriot Greek (Section 4), as well as dia- lectal variability within Greece (Section 5.1) — this same abstraction must also be implicitly assumed — in the same way that the difference is often unquestioningly assumed — if the question of the ‘difference’ of Cypriot Greek is to be posed and made sense of at all. The second dubious premise on which the question of the difference of Cypriot Greek relies is that everyone shares this view. In other words, once the difference between SMG and Cypriot Greek is reified, it is fixed and remains stable across speakers and encounters. However, as Lippi-Green (1997:72; emphasis added) is quick to remind us, When we are confronted with a new person we want to talk to or must talk to, we make a quick series of social evaluations based on many external cues, one of them being the person’s language and accent. Those sociolinguistic cues are directly linked to homeland, the race and ethnicity, the social self of the person in front of us. Based on our personal histories, our own backgrounds and social selves (which together make up a set of filters through which we hear the people we talk to), we will take a communicative stance. Most of the time, we will agree to carry our share of the [communicative] burden. Sometimes, if we are especially positive about the configuration of social characteristics we see in the person, or if the purposes of communication are especially important to us, we will accept a disproportionate amount of the burden. Intelligibility, in other words, is a matter of degree and can vary along a number of dimensions including familiarity with the other variety, the type of activity, familiarity with, and disposition toward, one’s interlocutor, as well as familiarity and emotional involvement with the particular topic at hand (cf. Hudson 1996:35–36). And since intelligibility is widely rationalised as the interactional outcome of difference — for, why else would intelligibility be appealed to as a criterion for dialect vs. language status (Voegelin & Harris 1951), if not because it is supposed to tell us something about how different two varieties are? — varying degrees of intelligibility can generate varying judgments about the degree of difference between two varieties across circumstances and speakers. A survey of individual speakers’ perceptions of the difference of Cypriot Greek would therefore be a worthwhile project in its own right, one which is likely to reveal individual and perhaps even Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 04:46:58AM via free access Perceptions of difference in the Greek sphere 63 cross-generational variation itself, calling for an explanation. However, the pur- pose of this article is different. Rather than gauging perceptions of difference at the micro-level, where they are also prone to methodological limitations such as subject accommodation to the interviewer and/or style of the questionnaire, the difference of Cypriot Greek is now dealt with as a macro-level phenomenon. At this level, there is a general consensus among speakers of both varieties — also reflected in linguists’ comments cited at the outset — that a non-negligible degree of difference exists between them. Granting, then, always with these two provisos in mind, that perceptions of difference between SMG and Cypriot Greek are fairly widespread, my aim is to trace the causes of these perceptions. To place linguistic developments on the island in their historical and geographical context, I begin by providing a brief outline of the history of Cyprus (Section 2), and of the emergence of the Cypriot dialect and its position in classifications of Modern Greek dialects (Section 3). I then focus on particular elements that distinguish Cypriot Greek from SMG synchronically at all levels of analysis and discuss their provenance (Section 4). It will emerge that such elements may be traced back to four main sources: ancient Greek, South-Eastern Greek, other languages, and innovations.

Load more