Why and how to integrate non-standard linguistic varieties into education: Cypriot Greek in Cyprus and the UK

Greek Cypriot education remains largely oriented towards promoting standard language ideologies and only accepts Standard Greek as the language of teaching and learning. • Cypriot Greek, the pupils’ home variety, is still seen as an obstacle to academic achievement by teachers and educational authorities. • Cypriot Greek needs to be integrated into policies and practices of teaching and learning both in Cyprus and in the UK’s Greek Cypriot community. • This will: o hone pupils’ awareness of different varieties; o foster the development of their critical literacy; o facilitate the acquisition of Standard Greek; o counter negative perceptions, stereotypes and feelings of inferiority associated with the use of Cypriot Greek; and, o aid in the maintenance and intergenerational transmission of Cypriot Greek as a heritage and community language in the UK. • Teachers and learning activities should promote and cultivate: o awareness and respect of the different varieties spoken in class, Cypriot Greek and Standard Greek; and, o awareness of vocabulary and grammar in the contexts of use of the two varieties and their social meanings. • This approach will ultimately change the way we view language and literacy learning

Language Attrition and Lived Experiences of Attrition among Greek Speakers in London:Special Issue Investigating Language Contact and New Varieties

The purpose of this study was to investigate attrition effects in a group of L1-Greek–L2-English speakers and to explore their views on attrition and their feelings about their own use of both languages. The first part (n = 32) was a psycholinguistic study measuring semantic and formal verbal fluency which was part of a broader project. The second part (n = 14) was a sociolinguistic study of semi-structured interviews aiming to gain insights into participants’ lived experiences of attrition. In verbal fluency, monolinguals outperformed bilinguals in the number of correct responses in both semantic and formal fluency. The analysis of the interview transcripts suggested that attriters experience attrition negatively, as a loss of a competence they once had, with two types of negative experiences emerging more prominently: (a) the realisation that they have difficulties with lexical retrieval and (b) stigmatising and judgemental comments by (non)-attriters. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, this study on attriters can give us unique insights into their lived experience of attrition

Attitudes towards Cypriot Greek and Standard Modern Greek in London’s Greek Cypriot community

Aim To investigate whether the positive attitudes towards Standard Modern Greek and the mixture of positive and negative attitudes towards Cypriot Greek that have been documented in Cyprus are also present in London's Greek Cypriot community. Approach Unlike previous quantitative works, the study reported in this article was qualitative and aimed at capturing the ways in which attitudes and attitude-driven practices are experienced by members of London's diasporic community. Data and Analysis Data were collected by means of semi-structured, sociolinguistic interviews with 28 members of the community. All participants were second-generation heritage speakers, successive bilinguals in Cypriot Greek and English, and successive bidialectal speakers in Cypriot Greek and Standard Modern Greek. The data were analysed qualitatively (thematic analysis). Findings – Positive perceptions of Standard Modern Greek and mixed perceptions, both positive and negative, of Cypriot Greek are found in the context of London. – As in Cyprus, Standard Modern Greek is perceived as a prestigious, proper and 'correct' variety of Greek. Cypriot Greek, in contrast, is described as a villagey, heavy and even broken variety. – Greek complementary schools play a key role in engendering these attitudes. – Unlike in Cyprus, in the London community, the use of Cypriot Greek is also discouraged in informal settings such as the home. Originality Papapavlou & Pavlou contended that "there are no signs of negative attitudes towards Cypriot Greek [in London]" (2001, p. 104). This research shows this claim to be false. Significance/Implications Negative attitudes towards Cypriot Greek lead to a community-wide preference for the use of Standard Modern Greek in communication with other members of the Greek Cypriot community, which poses a great threat to the intergenerational transmission and maintenance of Cypriot Greek as a heritage language in London

Understanding diachronic change in cappadocian greek the dialectological perspective

This article challenges the widely held view that a series of pervasive diachronic innovations in Cappadocian Greek owe their development to language contact with Turkish. Placing particular emphasis on its genealogical relationships with the other dialects of Asia Minor, the claim is that language change in Cappadocian is best understood when considered within a larger dialectological context. Examining the limited use of the definite article as a case in point and in comparison with parallel developments attested in Pontic and Silliot Greek, it is shown in detail that the surface similarity of the outcomes of Cappadocian innovations to their Turkish structural equivalents represents the final stages in long series of language-internal developments whose origins predate the intensification of Cappadocian—Turkish contact. The article thus offers an alternative to contact-oriented approaches and calls for a revision of accepted views on the language-internal and -external dynamics that shaped Cappadocian into its modern form. © 2013 John Benjamins Publishing Company

A study of Cappadocian Greek nominal morphology from a diachronic and dialectological perspective

In this dissertation, I investigate a number of interrelated developments affecting the morphosyntax of nouns in Cappadocian Greek. I specifically focus on the development of differential object marking, the loss of grammatical gender distinctions, and the neuterisation of noun inflection. My aim is to provide a diachronic account of the innovations that Cappadocian has undergone in the three domains mentioned above. Αll the innovations examined in this study have the effect of rendering the morphology and syntax of nouns in Cappadocian more like that of neuters. On account of the historical and sociolinguistic circumstances in which Cappadocian developed as well as of the superficial similarity of their outcomes to equivalent structures in Turkish, previous research has overwhelmingly treated the Cappadocian developments as instances of contact-induced change that resulted from the influence of Turkish. In this study, I examine the Cappadocian innovations from a language-internal point of view and in comparison with parallel developments attested in the other Modern Greek dialects of Asia Minor, namely Pontic, Rumeic, Pharasiot and Silliot. My comparative analysis of a wide range of dialect-internal, cross-dialectal and cross-linguistic typological evidence shows that language contact with Turkish can be identified as the main cause of change only in the case of differential object marking. On the other hand, with respect to the origins of the most pervasive innovations in gender and noun inflection, I argue that they go back to the common linguistic ancestor of the modern Asia Minor Greek dialects and do not owe their development to language contact with Turkish. I show in detail that the superficial similarity of these latter innovations’ outcomes to their Turkish equivalents in each case represents the final stage in a long series of typologically plausible, language-internal developments whose early manifestations predate the intensification of Cappadocian–Turkish linguistic and cultural exchange. These findings show that diachronic change in Cappadocian is best understood when examined within a larger Asia Minor Greek context. On the whole, they make a significant contribution to our knowledge of the history of Cappadocian and the Asia Minor Greek dialects as well as to Modern Greek dialectology more generally, and open a fresh round of discussion on the origin and development of other innovations attested in these dialects that are considered by historical linguists and Modern Greek dialectologists to be untypically Greek or contact-induced or both