Cypriot Greek As a Heritage and Community Language in London: (Socio)Linguistic Aspects of a Non-Standard Variety in a Diasporic Context1

CYPRIOT GREEK AS A HERITAGE AND COMMUNITY LANGUAGE IN LONDON: (SOCIO)LINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF A NON-STANDARD VARIETY IN A DIASPORIC CONTEXT1 Petros Karatsareas University of Westminster Abstract Cypriot Greek has been spoken in the United Kingdom as a heritage and community language for over a century by a sizeable Greek Cypriot diaspora. In this chapter, I describe Cypriot Greek as it is spoken in London, presenting some of its key linguistic characteristics and discussing aspects of its sociolinguistic status in the wider UK context. In terms of linguistic characteristics, I present older, regional features that are currently being levelled in Cyprus but which survive in London’s Cypriot Greek; Standard Modern Greek features that are increasingly used in London even in informal instances of communication; and, phenomena that are attributed to language contact with English. In terms of sociolinguistic status, I focus on the intergenerational transmission of Cypriot Greek in London and identify three key factors that threaten its maintenance in the diaspora: its minority status with respect to English, its non- prestigious status with respect to Standard Modern Greek, and also its non-prestigious status with respect to Cypriot Greek as it is currently spoken in Cyprus. 1. London’s Greek Cypriot diaspora: a tile in the city’s multicultural and multilingual mosaic The United Kingdom has historically been the principal destination of Cypriot emigrants (Constantinou, 1990). Christodoulou places the onset of migration from Cyprus to the UK in 1902 (1959; cited in Constantinou, 1990: 151– 152). Migration remained low until the mid-1950s and only began to increase in 1955–1959, when violence on the island intensified during the anti-colonial struggles. Migratory flows reached an unprecedented peak in 1960–1963, immediately after the independence of Cyprus in 1960. Constantinou (1990) has described this period as a mass exodus driven by a general feeling of uncertainty caused by the establishment of the Cyprus as an independent state, a high rate of unemployment and the passing of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962, which would limit the Commonwealth citizens’ rights to work in the UK. Migration peaked again in 1975, one year after the 1974 crisis, and reached its lowest levels in 1983. There is not a single area of Cyprus that was not affected by emigration. The 1946 census (Percival, 1949: 7), however, identified six areas defined around specific villages in five of the island’s six districts as having contributed to the earliest migratory flows in larger numbers (Map 1): 1. Nicosia District: the area around Klirou and Palaichori. 2. Kyrenia District: the area around Kormakitis and Diorios. 3. Famagusta District: the area between Yialousa and Akanthou. 4. Famagusta District: the area around Marathovounos and Pyrga. 5. Larnaca District: the area around Lefkara. 6. Paphos District: the area around Drouseia, Stroumpi and Lysos. 1 This study was conducted with the financial support of the British Academy through a Postdoctoral Fellowship, the University of the West of England, Bristol, and the University of Westminster. I am grateful to Achilleas Hadjikyriacou, Maria Panteli-Papalouca, Stavroulla Prodromou, Maro Strouthou, and Christodoulos Stylianou for helping me to recruit participants and generally facilitating my access to London’s community; and to my research assistant, Alexandra Georgiou, for all her help and support. Last but not least, I am indebted to all the members of London’s Greek Cypriot diaspora who participated in the study. Map 1: areas in Cyprus with large numbers of emigrants to the UK. Based on Constantinou (1990: 158) with data from Percival (1949: 7). Prior to the independence of Cyprus, emigration consisted predominantly of men, who came to the UK in search of work and would return to the island to find spouses, whom they would later bring with them. After independence, emigration was more family-based whereby whole families emigrated altogether or one member migrated first to be joined by the remaining members at a later time. Throughout the period of migration, migrants tended to be of young age and have a basic level of education, if they indeed happened to have received any schooling in Cyprus at all. They were also low to medium skilled, for the most part farmers, manual workers, production workers, tailors, metal workers and carpenters. In the UK, their first employment included the catering business. Later, tailoring and dressmaking became popular occupations for many members of the diaspora (Constantinides, 1990; Constantinou, 1990). Today, the Greek Cypriot παροικία [pariˈcia] ‘expatriate community’ is one of the over 200 ethnolinguistic minorities that compose the UK’s diverse population (Baker & Eversley, 2000; Eversley et al., 2010). The exact size of the community is, perhaps unsurprisingly, difficult to determine. Official sources such as the 2011 census document only the number of UK residents who were born in Cyprus (82,295 individuals; Office for National Statistics) and thus fail to account for the number of UK residents with a Greek Cypriot background who were born in the country. Other sources place the figure somewhere between 150,000 and 300,000 people (Anthias, 1990; Constantinides, 1990; Constantinou, 1990; Christodoulou-Pipis, 1992l Gardner-Chloros, 1992; Papapavlou & Pavlou, 2001; National Federation of Cypriots in the UK). As noted by Constantinides (1990: 133), the community might initially seem rather small, especially when compared with other ethnolinguistic communities present in the country. However, if one considers the entire population of the Republic of Cyprus (838,897 individuals; 2011 census), the large size of the UK diaspora becomes clear, equalling between one fifth and one third of the metropolitan Greek Cypriot population. The greatest number of the UK’s Greek Cypriots are found in London with smaller communities in other major cities such as Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool. Data from the 2008 Annual School Census on the distribution of different languages spoken by London’s schoolchidren show that the boroughs of Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey, and Islington in the north of the capital’s metropolitan area have the highest concentration of Greek speakers, confirming earlier accounts and language surveys (Linguistic Minorities Project, 1985; Constantinides, 1990; Baker & Eversley, 2000); see Map 2. Josephides (1990) describes London’s diaspora as an active network of strong social ties supported and reinforced not only by kinship and friendship relations but also by proximity of residence, employment relations as well as a number of social and communal structures of Greek Cypriot interest. These include community centres; associations, societies and clubs; political organisations; action groups; women’s groups; complementary schools; the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain, and its parishes; and, printed and non-printed media such as the Parikiaki and Eleftheria newspapers, London Greek Radio and Hellenic TV. Map 2: areas of London with large numbers of people with a Greek Cypriot background. Early Greek Cypriot migrants were largely monolingual and monodialectal in Cypriot Greek (henceforth CyGr), with only rudimentary knowledge of Standard Modern Greek (henceforth SModGr) and English (Gardner-Chloros, 1992: 115). Today, the linguistic repertoire of London’s Greek Cypriot diaspora includes three languages: English, the majority language of the UK, and CyGr and SModGr as the two heritage languages of the community. For first- generation speakers (born in Cyprus and migrated to the UK as late adolescents or adults), English is a second language, which they learned after the end of childhood. Second-generation speakers (born in the UK to Cyprus-born parents), and third-generation speakers (born in the UK to UK-born parents and Cyprus-born grandparents) are both dominant in English, having acquired it either from birth at home at the same time as CyGr (simultaneous bilinguals) or when they started attending mainstream British schools, having first acquired CyGr (sequential bilinguals). Knowledge of SModGr is gained through formal education, participation in the public life of the community, and exposure to media from Cyprus and Greece. Depending on the type and amount of schooling they received in Cyprus before migrating, first-generation speakers will have been exposed to SModGr either from the onset of their schooling or, if they did not attend school in Cyprus, from their late adolescent and adult years. For second- and third-generation speakers, exposure to the standard language normally starts when they begin attending one of the approximately 50 Greek complementary schools that operate in the UK, teaching Greek language, history, geography and folk tradition (mainly song and dance) to children with a Greek Cypriot background. No generation is dominant in SModGr. In this chapter, I describe the heritage variety of CyGr that is spoken in London’s diaspora, presenting some of its key linguistic characteristics and discussing aspects of its sociolinguistic status in the wider UK context, drawing on data collected through ethnographic observations and interviews with members of London’s Greek Cypriot diaspora from September 2014 onwards. I first provide a brief theoretical outline of the (socio)linguistics of heritage and community languages in section 2. I then turn to the linguistic characteristics in section 3 and move

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