Petrou Maria. The uniqueness of spoken Turkish in Cyprus

Journal of Turkish Linguistics. — Vol. 1. — No 1. — Skopje: Institute for Research of Turkish Language, 2007. — 56-73 p.The official language in North Cyprus is Turkish, which is in its written form the same with standard Turkey Turkish. The spoken varieties, however, show some uniqueness in phonology, morphology, syntax and in lexicon. These unique characteristics occur in no other dialect. The Turkish-Cypriot variety gives partly (like Gagauz) a non-Turkish language expression and this is due to the fact that its syntax is similar to Indo-European languages1. There is no doubt, that the Turkish-Cypriot language was influenced from Greek-Cypriot and vice versa, because of their contact, which lasted almost 400 years. This contact broke off on account of the division of the island. Nevertheless, the Turkish-Cypriots retained these influenced elements.Besides that, there are some villages, like Potamia, Pila and the Karbas area, where Turkish- and Greek-Cypriots still live together. Apart from the Greek influence, one should take English into consideration, since it was a prestige language (1878) und until today remains an important language for Turkish-Cypriots, as well as for Greek-Cypriots.