From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cypriot Turkish Kıbrıs Türkçesi, Kıbrıs ağzı
Spoken in:	Cyprus
Region:	Cyprus
Total speakers:	177,000 [1]
Language family:	Altaic[2] (controversial)  Turkic   Southern Turkic or Oghuz    Turkish group     Dialect of Turkish      Cypriot Turkish
Writing system:	Latin alphabet
Official status
Official language of:	Cyprus, Northern Cyprus
Regulated by:	no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	tr
ISO 639-2:	tur
ISO 639-3:	tur
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

Cypriot Turkish is a dialect of Turkish spoken by Turkish Cypriots.

Contents 1 Sounds 1.1 Differences from standard ("İstanbul") Turkish 1.2 Consonants 1.3 Vowels 2 Writing System 3 Grammar 4 Semantics 5 References 6 See also 7 External links

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:

• Voicing of some unvoiced stops
  • t↔d, k↔g

Standard Turkish kurt ↔ Cypriot Turkish gurd "worm"

• Preservation of earlier Turkic *ŋ

Standard Turkish son ↔ Cypriot Turkish soñ "end, last"

Standard Turkish bin ↔ Cypriot Turkish biñ "thousand"

• Unvoicing of some voiced stops
  • b↔p

Standard Turkish Kıbrıs ↔ Cypriot Turkish Kıprız "Cyprus"

• Lenition of final affricates
  • ç(ʧ)↔ş(ʃ)

Standard Turkish hiç ↔ Cypriot Turkish hiş "no, none"

The last two alternations are more specific to Cypriot Turkish.

Consonant phonemes

	Labial		Alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Uvular		Glottal
Plosive	p	b	t	d			k	g	q	ɢ
Affricate					ʧ	ʤ
Fricative	f	v	s	z	ʃ		x	ɣ			h
Nasal	m		n				ŋ
Flap/Tap			r
Lateral			l
Approximant					j

	front		central		back
	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
high	i	y (ü)			ɯ (ı)	u
mid	e (ẹ)	œ (ö)				o
low	æ (e)		a

Cypriot Turkish is usually written as standard Turkish, using the Turkish latin alphabet. When it is necessary to express sounds not represented in the Turkish alphabet, the following symbols are used: ḳ(q), ġ(ɢ), ḥ or ḫ(x), ñ(ŋ).

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

• Standard Turkish "Okula gidecek misin?" in Cypriot Turkish "Gideyeng okula?" (Are you going to School?)

In Cypriot Turkish, reflexive pronoun in third person is different, which is "genni" (him, himself, them, themself).

Typical question sentences most of the time do not qualify as standard Turkish question. See example above. This is due to question suffixes are most of the time dropped by native Turkish Cypriots.

An other subtle difference is the emphasis on verbs.

1. ^ "[1] Ethnologue report for Cyprus"
2. ^ "[2] Ethnologue"

• Erdoğan Saracoğlu (1992). Kıbrıs Ağzı: Sesbilgisi Özellikleri, Metin Derlemeleri, Sözlük. K.K.T.C. Millî Eğitim ve Kültür Bakanlığı. ISBN 975-17-1015-4. 
• Yıltan Taşçı (1986). Kıbrıs Ağzı Dil Özellikleri. Lefkoşa: Akar Yayıncılık. 

• Turkish language
• Cypriot Greek

• List of Cypriot Turkish Vocabulary (in Turkish)
• Turkish Cypriot Idioms Search Engine