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Cypriot Turkish

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Cypriot Turkish

Cypriot Turkish (Kıbrıs Türkçesi) is a dialect of the Turkish language spoken by Turkish Cypriots both in Cyprus and in the diaspora.

Emanating from Anatolia and evolved for four centuries, Cypriot Turkish is the vernacular spoken by Cypriots with Ottoman ancestry, as well as by Cypriots who converted to Islam during Ottoman rule. It is understood by expatriate Cypriots living in the UK, United States, Australia and other parts of the world.

Cypriot Turkish consists of a blend of Ottoman Turkish and the Yörük dialect that is spoken in the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey. In addition, it has absorbed influences from Greek, Italian and English. Cypriot Turkish is mutually intelligible with Standard Turkish.

Since the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Turkish is found almost exclusively in Northern Cyprus, which is home to approximately 300,000 native Turkish speakers (including varieties of Turkish other than Cypriot) as of 2016 and 1,400 speakers in the south as of 2013. Of these, a significant number are immigrants from Turkey who do not speak the Cypriot variety of Turkish. Cypriot Turkish is not used officially in the north, where modern standard Turkish became the de facto official language of schools, government, and the media.

Cypriot Turkish is distinguished by a number of sound alternations not found in standard Turkish, but some of which are also quite common in other Turkish vernaculars:

The last two alternations are more specific to Cypriot Turkish and are seen less often in other Turkish vernacular.

Cypriot Turkish consonants are mostly the same as standard Turkish consonants. However, Cypriot Turkish has retained the phonemes /ŋ/ and /ɣ/, whereas standard Turkish lost them.

Cypriot Turkish is structured as a VO language as opposed to standard Turkish which is an OV language. It is very typical in forming a question.

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