Greek Cypriot dialect

[KingHarvest]

λόγιες λέξεις

Literally "scholarly words." More idiomatically "high register" or "literary," depending on context.

[md0]

Thanks. "Literary" will work in that case I think, since these words aren't always of a high register.

[ego]

The thing about CyG being stricter makes sense now, but I am still reluctant to accept the existence of a secondary stress that I can't hear. Ego, do you perchance have access to a phonetics lab?

There is a programme on praat.org where you can record your voice and then make a spectrogram! I am looking forward for the results

[md0]

I am not a good sample Innocent people will have to be used for that experiment.
I'll do that in time. After I get down and compile Praat on 64bit Linux, get a proper microphone and study other spectograms so I know what I am analyzing (and you sure like to mess with me, don't you? )

[ego]

I am not a good sample Innocent people will have to be used for that experiment.
I'll do that in time. After I get down and compile Praat on 64bit Linux, get a proper microphone and study other spectograms so I know what I am analyzing (and you sure like to mess with me, don't you? )

hehehe! To be honest I never used it myself. Anything that has to do with technology seems to complicated for me, I just don't get it, so I am waiting to find someone to do it with me the first time. After all I don't have any data to analyze yet

[md0]

I was watching SKAI TV's first episode of their "1821" documentary and a professor named Πασχάλης Κιτρομηλίδης appears. His use of words and pronunciation is clearly standard, but he's overall accent is somehow strange. The something-is-off-but-I-can-not-tell-what kind of strange.
It turns out he's born in Nicosia, but he lives in Greece for decades.
It was his intonation probably. So, Ego, do you got any info on distinctive Cypriot intonation patterns?

[Oleksij]

I was watching SKAI TV's first episode of their "1821" documentary and a professor named Πασχάλης Κιτρομηλίδης appears. His use of words and pronunciation is clearly standard, but he's overall accent is somehow strange. The something-is-of-but-I-can-not-tell-what kind of strange.
It turns out he's born in Nicosia, but he lives in Greece for decades.
It was his intonation probably. So, Ego, do you got any info on distinctive Cypriot intonation patterns?

I could testify that Cypriot intonation is indeed.. 'distinct', although my technical linguistic knowledge is extremely poor and it's 2am, so I can't really describe how exactly.

[ego]

I was watching SKAI TV's first episode of their "1821" documentary and a professor named Πασχάλης Κιτρομηλίδης appears. His use of words and pronunciation is clearly standard, but he's overall accent is somehow strange. The something-is-of-but-I-can-not-tell-what kind of strange.
It turns out he's born in Nicosia, but he lives in Greece for decades.
It was his intonation probably. So, Ego, do you got any info on distinctive Cypriot intonation patterns?

I could testify that Cypriot intonation is indeed.. 'distinct', although my technical linguistic knowledge is extremely poor and it's 2am, so I can't really describe how exactly.

I guess if you were not Cypriot meidei, it would be clearer to you. It is always harder to spot our own accent when we hear it.
I don't have any data on intonation, no. It is not as straightforward a topic as other aspects of phonology, and being lazy I avoid it

[md0]

If you guys can hear it, it probably exists... But I can only spot it when ever other CyG feature is missing and still, I can't describe how it differs at all (it's not just the lack of secondary stress that we were talking about earlier).

[md0]

A question: Do you think that Cypriot Greek contrasts [ptk] with [bdg]?
Given that /bdg/ are realized [^mbⁿd^ŋg], I was always under the impression that Cypriot Greek contrasts only between [ptk] [p^h:t^h:k^h:] and [^mbⁿd^ŋg] and that [bdg] are allophones of /ptk/. Some evidence on this is that loanwords like "video club" have unvoiced stops (viteo club) instead of prenasalized voiced (vindeo clumb)... and second language realization which systematically has unvoiced stops for non-nasalized voiced (like the people in my French classes, that pronounce /b/ as [p] or [^mb] depending on the person).

Your observations?

[ego]

A question: Do you think that Cypriot Greek contrasts [ptk] with [bdg]?
Given that /bdg/ are realized [^mbⁿd^ŋg], I was always under the impression that Cypriot Greek contrasts only between [ptk] [p^h:t^h:k^h:] and [^mbⁿd^ŋg] and that [bdg] are allophones of /ptk/. Some evidence on this is that loanwords like "video club" have unvoiced stops (viteo club) instead of prenasalized voiced (vindeo clumb)... and second language realization which systematically has unvoiced stops for non-nasalized voiced (like the people in my French classes, that pronounce /b/ as [p] or [^mb] depending on the person).

Your observations?

according to recent linguistic publications, CyG lacks voiced stops all together and as shocking as it may sound, I agree

I had a discussion with a Cypriot student here who is gonna work on CyG phonology for her dissertation. When she heard that CyG lacks voiced stops she was staring at me and rejected it. It was hard for her to accept that she was pronouncing 'en poro' instead of 'en boro' (I cannot), but when I listened to her this is what I heard.

And I remember once a Cypriot wrote 'clup' for 'club'! Indeed, if you ask a Cypriot who doesn't speak English at all to write down English words used in Cypriot today, which contain b,d,g he may actually write them with p,t,k. At the uni we used to make fun of a Cypriot friend who was pronouncing Goody's as Cooty's

In this paper voiced stops are only accepted as 'non-contrastive (allophonic)': http://idiom.ucsd.edu/~arvaniti/ArvanitiCY.pdf

[md0]

CyG lacks voiced stops all together and as shocking as it may sound

Oh yes, it's a statement to make you a receiver of enormous amounts of staring. (btw, there's a Japanese dialect which seems to lack voiceless stops, contrasting only between voiced and prenasalized voiced. Not very relevant but surprised me).

I have lots of party invitations that give directions to "clups". Oh, and this is easily to spot in Nicosia
http://i56.tinypic.com/5un789.jpg.

But I would pronounce έν μπόρω as 'e^mboro (well, actually I would probably use the form ένι μπόρω 'eni^mboro), not 'eniporo. Or was she trying to have a non-prenasalized voiced stop word initially to mimic StG accent? If that's the case, [p] is understandable, since she doesn't have [b].

[mōdgethanc]

according to recent linguistic publications, CyG lacks voiced stops all together and as shocking as it may sound, I agree

Why is this shocking? Chinese doesn't have them either, nor do some dialects of German. It's debatable whether they're phonemes in standard Greek either.

[md0]

How can they not be phonemes in StG? They do contrast. ['pata] isn't the same as ['pada] or ['bada] (in a non-prenasalizing accent this is. I believe it's very common in Athens).

Lack of voiced stops isn't that rare, but is certainly something that it's not common in Greek linguistics, especially in how Greek dialectical phonology is explained in the general public (dictionaries for example).

[mōdgethanc]

Because they're spelled as contractions of /mb, nd, ng/. Some people even consider the palatal consonants to be allophones of regular consonants followed by /i/, but I'm not sure how true this is either.

[md0]

That's a minimalist approach, isn't it? I don't really like it.
[k] and [c] etc also contrast ([ka]VS[cia]VS[ca]), the /i/ is only in spelling for [ca].

[mōdgethanc]

That's a minimalist approach, isn't it? I don't really like it.

Yeah, me neither. If native speakers consider them phonemes, then they are.

[k] and [c] etc also contrast ([ka]VS[cia]VS[ca]), the /i/ is only in spelling for [ca].

How do you write [cia], then - κία? Just to play devil's advocate here: couldn't this be considered /kia/?

[md0]

Yes it's κία, as in ακακία, the tree. I suppose one could argue that it's basically /akakia/ at the phonemic level and it comes out as [akacia]. But no one uses this, even ΛΚΝ uses its k-tilde which equals to IPA's [c]. Even though, [c] would be still a phoneme because it is constrastive in words like κακιά [kaca]. (can two syllables of the same word be used as a minimal pair, or should I find another word?)

[mōdgethanc]

If you can find two different words, sure.

[ego]

CyG lacks voiced stops all together and as shocking as it may sound

But I would pronounce έν μπόρω as 'e^mboro (well, actually I would probably use the form ένι μπόρω 'eni^mboro), not 'eniporo. Or was she trying to have a non-prenasalized voiced stop word initially to mimic StG accent? If that's the case, [p] is understandable, since she doesn't have [b].

I bet you pronounce em poro but u don't realise it