The Cypriot dialect has travelled a long way from the margins. Once confined to casual conversations and jokes among friends, it is now breaking into public life, heard in radio ads, TV sketches, and even used by politicians when it’s considered convenient.
The revival of the folk song “Κόρη Μηλιά” and the popularity of artists like Alejjos who incorporate folk in their work signal a growing pride in the local cultural character and in speaking the way people actually speak.
This resurgence goes hand in hand with new efforts to preserve and teach the dialect. Just last month, the first mobile app devoted entirely to Cypriot Greek, Cyprusays, was launched. Aimed at Cypriots abroad, first-generation children who want to sound like their parents and grandparents, the app creators recognise what many have long felt: standard Greek is not quite enough to feel at home.
Two weeks ago, a small café in Nicosia’s old town became the latest stage for this boundary renegotiation. Among the worn stone walls of building that have many stories to tell, people gathered for a discussion wittily entitled “Double Consonants” a nod to the hallmark sounds of the dialect.
Organised by the Afoa collective and led by University of Cyprus linguists Elena Ioannidou and Spyros Armostis, the event was less a lecture than a collective reflection. The café filled beyond capacity, with listeners spilling onto the pavement, eager to share stories and frustrations about how their language is heard and judged.
One teacher stood up to recall a visit from a school inspector who reprimanded her for using too much dialect in class. The exchange marked her career, as soon after, she was transferred to another city. Her story drew murmurs of recognition across the room, as if everyone there had felt that same tension between expression and expectation.
Much like the inspector, many educators think the position of Cypriot Greek in the classroom is not up for debate.
One philologist teaching history, antiquities, and modern Greek at a Nicosia lyceum, who asked to remain anonymous, described the situation simply:
“At school, our official language is Standard Modern Greek,” she told the Cyprus Mail.
“The dialect is our identity, yes, but it belongs to our spoken everyday life. It’s a piece of Greek not something separate, and it’s always been this way. Of course, a student might sometimes let a ‘tzai’ [dialect version of ‘and’] slip, the same happens to us teachers,” she explains, “but our duty is to model the proper language.”
Using Cypriot too freely, she argued, risks confusing students who already struggle to express themselves in the standard form. Yet, while her perspective reflects the practical challenges of teaching, linguists argue that the story of language in Cypriot classrooms is not quite so simple.
For linguist Spyros Armostis, assistant professor at the University of Cyprus and board member of the Cyprus Linguistics Society, the question of language in education is as much about policy as it is about perception.
“From a linguistic point of view, the Standard Modern Greek is itself a dialect,” he said, “one that was called upon to take on the role of the official language in 1976.”
Among linguists, it is a common understanding, particularly in recent scholarship, not to distinguish rigidly between languages and dialects, as there is no precise way to measure the difference.
“A language is a dialect with an army and navy,” one saying goes.
The phrase, often called the Weinreich witticism, is a quip popularised by scholar Max Weinreich about the arbitrary nature of the distinction between a dialect and a language. It highlights how social and political factors shape a community’s perception of linguistic status.
In the context of schooling, Armostis explained, “the target language, that is, the one children are expected to learn, is Standard Modern Greek. The education ministry, through its circulars, promotes a monodialectal approach in education: of the two dialects of Greek, Cypriot and Standard, it considers that teaching should be done exclusively in the Standard, while Cypriot, though declared to be ‘respected’, should be avoided.”
That avoidance, however, often takes the form of active correction. “We observe linguistic policing in schools, something that has been documented through research,” says Armostis. “Ethnographic studies in classrooms show that teachers use ‘correction’ techniques when students speak Cypriot, replacing dialectal forms with Standard ones, asking them to repeat something ‘properly,’ and so on.”
Yet, the dialect never truly disappears, rather “it is used by both students and teachers, especially in situations that do not require much formality, such as classroom organisation, humour, and everyday interactions.”
“So,” he explains, “the dialect remains alive within the school, but often under institutional restriction and correction.”
Armostis clarified that, despite the common belief that the Cypriot dialect has no place in the classroom, scientific research shows otherwise.
“Studies both in Cyprus and internationally, in countries such as Norway, Sweden, Australia and Papua New Guinea, have demonstrated that using the linguistic variety children already speak at home in no way hinders learning the target language of the school. On the contrary, it offers a strong advantage for students’ progress.”
This advantage arises because the dialect serves as a linguistic resource on which teaching can build, a springboard to learning the target language.
“When teachers creatively compare the children’s mother tongue variety with the target variety, students better understand the structure and usage of the target variety,” he added.
In Cyprus, research has confirmed this approach as well. In classes where Standard Modern Greek was taught in tandem with the Cypriot dialect, students performed better, compared to classes where the dialect was completely ignored, both in writing and speaking.
“Therefore,” he explained, “the belief that the dialect ‘causes’ difficulties in learning Standard Greek is not supported by science. In fact, the opposite is true: knowledge of Cypriot plays a significant role in mastering Standard Greek better.”
The philologist mentioned above has little time for such arguments.
“To say we have a different language and that we are different [from Greece] is unacceptable. To break away from the Greek root and say we have our own language… things are not like that. I simply, as a philologist, consider this mistaken, invalid.”
She does, however, recognise that the dialect has its place, at home, among friends, and even in the classroom, where it can clarify points and provide examples. Local culture, including the dialect, is incorporated into the curriculum to some extent, particularly in literature.
“The Cypriot dialect holds exceptional value,” she said, adding that “it constitutes an inseparable part of our life and we must highlight it.”
Her concern is with the “weaponising” of the dialect by identifying it as an equal or separate variety to standard Greek.
“People are trying to create issues where none exist,” she said. “We shouldn’t be arguing among ourselves about things that aren’t real problems.”
For 26-year-old Panagiota Zindili, known by her preferred name Roz, the politics of language do not begin with those who bring the dialect to the stage or the page; They begin in classrooms.
“The problem starts when a child writes ‘I love you’ in the Cypriot form for their school essay and a teacher marks it with an X in red ink,” she said.
“Is it not a linguistic crime to tell a child that the way they learned to say ‘I love you’ is grammatically wrong?”
A poet, artist, and social anthropologist, Roz writing in Cypriot Greek is an act of alignment with her mindscape.
“It is the language I think in,” she said. “When I began to write in Cypriot, I began to write as I thought. The filter of translation or adaptation into Greek disappeared. I love Greek too, I have lived in Greece, I love Thessaloniki and Athens, I studied there, but it is not the language I think in.”
Roz sees the harm not in teaching Standard Greek itself, but in how language is taught in schools, a harm that is both linguistic and psychological.
She observes a stigma around Cypriot Greek, internalised early. Because children learn that the dialect’s forms are “incorrect” rather than simply “non-standard”, they begin doubting the language they think in.
“Many people in Cyprus struggle to express themselves because their native variety is often harshly criticised. As a result, many feel unable to fully express themselves, believing their language is not ‘official’ enough. This has created, I would say, a collective complex around language and self-expression.”
One moment that exemplified this collective complex came when she left Cyprus for university in Greece. “The first day when I wanted to raise my hand to ask a question or comment, I felt anxiety about how my accent would sound. How will people react?”
Reclaiming space for Cypriot expression
Over the years, Roz has noticed a gradual shift as restrictions begin to ease. Looking back at people in journalism and politics from 20 years ago, when Cypriot was rarely spoken at all compared to today.
The change is particularly visible in the arts, with artists increasingly claiming Cypriot as a language of expression. She points to the theatre play Out of Necessity, which premiered in March 2021, calling it “a landmark performance for Cypriot theatre and literature”.
“There is a re-appropriation of Cypriot in the artistic world,” she explained, “and I believe that it comes in a nurturing and informed way.”
But progress, she emphasised, is not linear.
“There is now space for Cypriot Greek because it was demanded by people, by artists, by researchers. But because space has opened up, some people don’t like it,” she said. “They want it to disappear or to be marginalised; to be neat, to not disturb, to not make noise.”
One thing is clear: the boundaries around when and where Cypriot can be used are evolving, and critiques persist that the education system remains archaic in its exclusion of the dialect.
The traditional divide between “proper” Greek for public life and the dialect for private conversation is increasingly being challenged and, in many contexts, deliberately crossed.
