This book contributes to the growing number of linguistic studies on indigenous language varieties, and is intended as a concise and up-to-date introduction to the spoken urban variety of Cypriot Greek since the written code is not standardized.
This variety constitutes the mesolect of the dialect continuum and co-exists with a number of mostly rural varieties. It is the most robust of the southern dialects of the Greek language. It is spoken by one half million speakers on the island Republic of Cyprus and by the great majority of the Cypriots of the Greek-Cypriot diaspora.
The book starts with the historical information background on the island and the dialect. Because of the confusion surrounding the status of the dialect on the island a chapter is dedicated to the sociolinguistics of Cypriot Greek.
Phonology, morphology and lexicon are the areas that mostly distinguish Cypriot Greek from Standard Modern Greek. Therefore, separate chapters are dedicated to the phonological and morphological description of the dialect and its contacts with other languages. A comprehensive bibliography concludes the volume.
Pavlos Pavlou, University of Cyprus
