Κυπριακό Κινηματικό Αρχείο
Cyprus Movements Archive
Kıbrıs Sosyal Hareket Arşivi

by A.P.

The oppression of the Cypriot language/dialect or the process of nativization of the Cypriots

The nativization of the Cypriots

To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization…

Every colonized people–in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality–finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation; that is, with the culture of the mother country. The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards.

Frantz Fanon, Black skins, white masks

“Cypriots defend their dialect like Ajaxes” said with obvious frustration from Cypriot state television (and he was talking to Cypriots of course) a sympathetic Helleno-centric linguist who wasted years trying to Hellenise Cypriot toponyms. For reasons that remain unfathomable (unless Neo-Cypriots also reached Anafotia and Latsia), the Cypriots damaged the signs that instead of Anafotia read Anafotida and instead of Latsia, Lakka (in Greek, that is). This underground resistance of the Cypriots to the “Koine Modern Greek” deserves to be interpreted, especially at a time when the language issue is coming back.

The language issue comes up regularly in Cyprus. Until the 1950s the main dimension of this controversy took the form of the demotion of the Cypriot dialect to the level of the “jungle” - of primary material. On the one hand, the Cypriot dialect was presented as genuine ancient Greek because of the survival of words and expressions from Homer's time. On the other hand, however, the educational system and the majority of intellectuals stressed that Cypriots had to learn to speak the Athenian version of the Greek language. The Cypriot dialect was proof that Cypriots were Greeks - now they could forget it and learn to speak the 'correct' modern Greek common tongue. In other words, the Cypriot dialect was the language of the uneducated natives whom the modern Greek nation had to civilize, to make human.

Thus a relationship of power was created between the official Athenian dialect/language and the Cypriot dialect. The Cypriots, as the folk tradition of the piitarides [folk poets] and tsiattista [oral poems] testifies, had no problem in expressing themselves. Not only could they express themselves but, as has been observed, the very structure of the dialect had a musicality that made Cypriots develop a rich tradition of folk poetic speech (both written and spoken). The Cypriot dialect in this sense is the living memory of the history of Cyprus. The wealth of foreign words (Arabic, Latin, Greek, Turkish, English) that it possesses is the historical memory of the cultures that have passed through Cyprus. In this language, which the Cypriots developed on their own, they were able to express themselves and create.

Koine Modern Greek, on the contrary, was created by the intellectuals of Athens as a mechanism for homogenizing the population of the Greek state created after 1821. The aim of this language was ideological and political. It was consciously intended to eliminate the Arvanitic, Aromanian (Vlach) dialects spoken by the Greeks of mainland Greece and to condemn to decline the Greek dialects of the islands of the Eastern Mediterranean (Corfu, Crete, Rhodes, Cyprus, etc.) and other parts of the region.

The official language of Athens (despite the conflicts between katharevousa and demotic) had behind it the state apparatus of Athens and the prestige of the “imaginary community” of the Greek nation. So to speak the Koine Modern Greek meant to be legitimate to the dictates of the national centre but also the promise that you would be “Greek”. A superior human, that is.

In order to establish Modern Greek as the superior language, all dialects and local cultures had to be transformed into “raw materials”, into raw material, which the intellectuals of Athens would use to create the mythology of the Greek nation. In other words, the memory of the local populations had to disappear. They now had to see themselves as poor relatives / as the periphery of the national centre. The fact that e.g. Kolokotronis spoke Vlach, that Botsaris did not know any Greek dialect, that the Souliotes, the people of Hydra and Spetses spoke Arvanitic, that many Greek Macedonian gladiators spoke the Slavic dialect of Macedonia, was completely erased from historical memory. The fact that in Cyprus other cultures besides the supposed Greek one flourished had to be forgotten.

The local populations were thus culturally transformed into “colonized” natives. Just as the European Colonialists recognized that Africans and Asians were human, but not complete, and thus had to be civilized - in the same manner the national center recognized Greeks from Moldavia to Cappadocia. But these “potential Greeks” had to be educated, to forget what they knew, to learn the new language, the new education. Only then would they become complete people, that is, Greeks.

National Colonialism and the Authority of Language

The process of alienating people from their immediate experience, the destruction of local creation was analogous to that of Colonialism as described by Fanon, Malcolm X and other anti-colonial revolutionaries. With one essential difference. This is a relatively unrecognized phenomenon - National Colonialism. The imposition of the culture of the state (the capital) on the province. Since the 1960s, the awareness of this phenomenon led to various decentralization-devolution movements that sometimes resulted in the registration of local dialects (Occitania-France) and the recognition of bilingualism in dialect-formal language relations (USA).

The long-term effects of this power relation between the official language of the state and the dialect were to entrench power relations in society itself. The teacher, the priest, the civil servant, the politician, the journalist, the intellectual is separated from the mass of uneducated “ peasants” by the use of the language of the national centre. You rose in the social hierarchy to the extent that you spoke “good Greek”.

The equation until 74 was: The use of “Koine Modern Greek” meant you were educated, upper class, a human of authority. The use of the Cypriot dialect, on the contrary, meant vulgarity, underdevelopment, backwardness.

Thousands of years of history were and are being levelled in the classrooms by banning the Cypriot dialect. And of course the majority was condemned to silence. In the 1950s, Nikos Kranidiotis in a commentary in Kypriaka Grammata [Cyprian Letters] observed this awkward silence of the students, the fact that they still remained natives.

“One of the most serious intellectual weaknesses of our young people is linguistic deficiency. Not only our uneducated but also our educated youth encounter insurmountable difficulties, especially in the spoken word, whose natural rapid rhythm requires a rich linguistic treasury and wide linguistic training. Linguistically heterogeneous and uneven full stops, phrases disjointed, sentences incoherent, unhellenic expressions, words that are not meant literally, adjectives faded, vocabulary poor, syntax loose, all together have created a meagre discourse without without roundness, without precision, without grace, in which the rough struggle and the clumsy - most of the times - effort to overcome successive expressive difficulties can be seen”.

And these were written at the time of the EOKA struggle, for today's supposed “golden youth”. On the contrary, 200 years ago, when Cypriots had not yet been “nativized” and their language had not yet taken a back seat, Monk Barsky found them completely different: “Almost everyone in Cyprus is quick in perception and eloquent in speech. “

Forms of Resistance: political and cultural autonomy

In the 1950s, however, there was a revival of interest in the written and spoken language of the Cypriot dialect. Beyond folklore, a series of articles by Tefkros Anthias in Haravgi in the late 50s began a small shift in the reappraisal of the Cypriot dialect. During Independence the progressive realisation among Cypriots that they could live without being a province of the national centre certainly gave a boost to the preservation of the Cypriot dialect in some ghettos. From 1960 to 74, however, the Ministry of Education and the army (the mechanisms by which the Greek state implanted its Greek national identity and language) remained in the hands of the Greek embassy. Thus the ridicule of the Cypriot dialect and the inferiority complex of the Cypriots continued. The language was the mechanism through which Athens insisted on submitting to the Cypriots that they were poor natives without culture in the face of the supposed greatness of the Neo-Hellenic Nation. However, the discontent of the Cypriots with the constant interventions of the Athenian state, with the division that existed in Cyprus from 64 to 67, led to the development of what Attalides calls “Cypriot consciousness”. A phenomenon articulated in the phrase “Cyprus for Cypriots”. The phrase appeared as a slogan on the walls and the development of Cypriot consciousness among Cypriots was one of the charges against Makarios in the period 72-74. After 74, the underground Cypro-centric tendencies appeared more forcefully and openly. The relationship between Cypriot consciousness and the dialect, however, was not direct. The main peak of Cypriot consciousness until recently was to a large extent the political demand for the complete independence of Cyprus. Only on a secondary level did this '“consciousness” emphasise the need for cultural dialogue (not just coexistence) with the Turkish Cypriots. In fact, the Neo- Cypriots of the 1970s remained prisoners of the “nativisation” imposed on them by the national colonialism of the “motherland” state. Only towards the end of the 70s and beginning of the 80s, with the publication of the 'Cypriot History' by K. Graikos, did the process of cultural self-identification of the Cypriot consciousness begin. It is in this context that some articles on the ghettoization and suppression of the Cypriot dialect appeared. Certainly a milestone for such a problematic is the article by Mr. Leontiou, excerpts of which we publish below. Mr Leontiou does not include his text in the effort of cultural self-identification. At one point in his article, in fact, he clearly states that he does not consider the politicization of language as a wise action. The article is a landmark, however, because it uses a modern scientific approach to analyse the self-ridicule, self-deprecation and general schizophrenia that Cypriots experience when they are forced to regard the living language they speak as inferior. He stresses at the outset the vagueness of the distinction between language and dialect and concludes with a more general reference to the oppression of diversity by the homogeneous language of nations.

Nationalism, authority and language in Cyprus

Towards the end of the 1980s the reappearance of a neo-nationalist discourse promoted by the media group DIAS led to a Modern Greek counter-offensive. The main edge of this linguistic attack was initially the use of English. The observation was of course correct. With the separation of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots after 74, the interaction of Greek and Turkish in the Cypriot dialect definitely (for the time being) stopped and was replaced by the interaction of Greek and English (in the Greek Modern dialect). The evolution was inevitable for 2 reasons: The economic development itself made English the necessary second language of the Cypriots since the island had become a commercial centre. The dialect itself, however, seems to have the tendency that the Helleno-centricists so dislike - the tendency to mix. Another necessary characteristic for a place that has been a geographical crossroads for so many centuries.

Helleno-centrics, of course, could be understood such things.

The attack, however, was probably driven by two other factors. In part, modern neo-nationalism supports independence, but now sees (like the nationalists of Dextas) that there will be 2 peoples, 2 nations living in Cyprus. So the third language, English, which had been established as the language of communication of the 2 communities must disappear. Let everyone speak their own language the neo-nationalists say in one way or another, there is no need for communication. One of them even suggested that we should build a wall (a la Berlin) in Cyprus to separate the Greeks and the Turks.

The other reason, and the most essential one, is the authority of language itself. Because the Athenian state was promoting the “nativization” of the Cypriots in order to keep Cyprus dependent, but this process was and is being carried out through local mechanisms and mouthpieces of authority. As P. Loizos observes in his article on the rise of Greek nationalism in Cyprus, the revival of enosis among certain sections of the population such as teachers in the 1970s had to do with their displacement from their position of prestige/status by English university graduates (doctors, lawyers, etc.). In the same way, the Helleno-centric intelligentsia today feels threatened because English is replacing Greek as the language of “civilization”. It is English now that is the language that leads to social advancement, on an island where the main income comes from tourism and offshore businesses. Historically, of course, this conflict had begun earlier (at the beginning of the century) and intensified in the 1950s, when the Helleno-centric intelligentsia used the struggle of EOKA to discourage the spread of English. The bourgeoisie always condoned such linguistic purity struggles and encouraged them. But there was a trick here too. The bourgeoisie encouraged the Hellenists to support Greek against English while they themselves sent their children to English-speaking schools. The recent experience of ridiculing Mr Anastasiades (chairman of the House Education Committee) was typical. Anastasiades was at the forefront of the attack on the University of Cyprus. Partly because the university's bibliography is in English and because the university is thus supposed to be 'de-hellenizing' the island. When an angry citizens' reaction against the MP broke out, the 'punch line' that hit home was the revelation that the children of the Greek-boasting MP are studying in England.

The use of language in Cyprus over the last 40 years is the cultural mechanism that sustains class structure, prestige groups and access to authority.

The basic hypocrisy of Greek nationalism in Cyprus is this: While it is the one that created the legitimacy of authority through language, it dares today to complain about its “unequal” conflict with English. But who destroyed the local culture, who turned our living language into a folkloric exhibit, dear neo-Greeks? The authority structures for the current prevalence of English were set by Greek nationalism with the establishment of “right” and “wrong” languages.

“We are talking” - it is after all a matter of dignity

In 1992 the Helleno-centricists finally turned their fire against the Cypriot dialect as well. Partly, of course, the excuse/trigger was the programme "Horis Plaisia [Without Constraints]" of April 92, where the position was expressed for the first time, on television, that Koine Modern Greek suppresses the Cypriot dialect and that an alphabet of the latter should be written. On a more general level, however, the Cypriot dialect seems to have overcome the crisis of ghettoization and decline diagnosed in the 1980s by K. Leontiou. Apart from the field of revues (which always maintained the Cypriot dialect for the popular audience), Cypriot began to be used in serious theatres (such as those of Y. Neophytou). But the decisive factor was the abolition of the state monopoly on the mass media. The need to make phone calls loosened the language codes - now one can hear the Cypriot dialect even as a semi-public speech (from the radio). That the midnight hours of the radios are flooded with tsiattista is typical. The Cypriot dialect has been for a century now, the hidden language of the night. Even the angry reaction of many to the Babiniotis article was typical. They reacted of course like Hellenized natives but at least they reacted to the “national centre”.

A new urban Cypriot dialect is beginning to take shape with a strong influence from both Greek and English.

Certainly, of course, the ridicule of the dialect is still here. As is the self-deprecation of Cypriots. That's why they stutter in the face of authority. They don't “know” how to speak according to the official languages. But on the street and in everyday life they defend themselves “as Ajaxes” as M. Christodoulou said. That is why the Helleno-centric “synergy” of authority fights with such passion any trace of the Cypriot dialect. The issue is not just the re-emergence of a neo-katharevousa. The target is the very existence of the Cypriots. It is evident, after all, in the discourse of the Helleno-centricists. “Cypriots are resisting…” “Cypriots don't understand”, “it's not just a matter for Cypriots” etc. as if they themselves were born in Kolonaki. Of course, it is also a class issue. That is why the Helleno-striken intellectuals so passionately embrace the nonsense of linguistic purity of Babiniotis and other Greek apostles of conservatism. They are desperately seeking to find a platform on which to base their authority. They will speak as “Greeks” and the rest will be the illiterate who, not knowing the bureaucratic laws of grammar, will be justifiably condemned to silence. And the authority of the Helleno-centric lust for pure words will finally be established in the name of the interests of the “nation”.

That is why Cypriots are resisting. That is why the “popular strata” will never speak the official language. It is class resistance and cultural resistance. Because at the bottom of the issue is not a national matter - it is a matter of dignity. We have a language too. We speak it. In the name of 10,000 years of history.