Cypriot Turkish (Kıbrıs Türkçesi) is a dialect of theTurkish language spoken byTurkish Cypriots both inCyprus and in thediaspora.

Emanating fromAnatolia and evolved for four centuries, Cypriot Turkish is thevernacular spoken by Cypriots withOttoman ancestry, as well as by Cypriots who converted toIslam during Ottoman rule.^[1] 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 ofOttoman Turkish and theYörük dialect that is spoken in theTaurus Mountains of southernTurkey. In addition, it has absorbed influences fromGreek,Italian andEnglish. Cypriot Turkish is mutually intelligible withStandard Turkish.

Since the 1974Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Turkish is found almost exclusively inNorthern 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.^[2] Of these, a significant number areimmigrants from Turkey who do not speak the Cypriot variety of Turkish. Cypriot Turkish is not used officially in the north, wheremodern standard Turkish became thede facto official language of schools, government, and the media.^[3]

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 unvoicedstops
  • t↔d, k↔g

Standard Turkishtaş ↔ Cypriot Turkishdaş "stone"

Standard Turkishkurt ↔ Cypriot Turkishgurt "wolf"

Standard Turkishpatates ↔ Cypriot Turkishbadadez "potato"

• Preservation of earlierTurkic*ñ

Standard Turkishnasılsın? ↔ Cypriot Turkishnasılsıñ? "how are you?"

Standard Turkishbin ↔ Cypriot Turkishbiñ "thousand"

Standard Turkish:Arabaya binmek ↔ Cypriot Turkish:Arabaya biñmek "getting in the car"

• Changing 1st person plural suffix
  • z↔k

Standard Turkishisteriz ↔ Cypriot Turkishisderik "we want"

• Unvoicing of some voiced stops
  • b↔p

Standard Turkish:bakla ↔ Cypriot Turkish:pakla "broad beans"

• Lenition of finalaffricates
  • ç ([tʃ]) ↔ ş ([ʃ])

Standard Turkishhiç ↔ Cypriot Turkishhiş "no, none"

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 aVO language as opposed to standard Turkish which is anOV language. It is very typical in forming a question.

• Standard TurkishOkula gidecek misin? is, in Cypriot Turkish,Gideceñ okula? ("Will you go to school?")

Cypriot Turkish uses theaorist tense instead of the present simple tense, and very often in place of the future tense as well.

• Standard TurkishOkula gidiyorum orOkula gideceğim ("I am going to school") are, in Cypriot Turkish,Giderim okula ("I go to school" / "I am going to school" / "I will go to school")

Cypriot Turkish does not use the narrative/indefinite past, and only uses the simple past instead.

• Standard TurkishEve gitmiş ("He is reported to have gone home") is, in Cypriot Turkish, not used. InsteadEve gitti orGitti eve ("He went home") suffices.

Cypriot Turkish also lacks the question suffix ofmi.^[4] This is similar to colloquial Azerbaijani.

• Standard TurkishAnnen evde midir? ("Is your mother at home?") is, in Cypriot Turkish,Anneñ evdedir?

In Cypriot Turkish, thereflexive pronoun in third person is different, namelygeñni ("him, himself, them, themself"). In Standard Turkish, this would bekendisi.

This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(January 2017)

Typical questions usually do not qualify as standard Turkish questions (see the example above) because question suffixes are usually dropped by native Turkish Cypriots. Another subtle difference is the emphasis on verbs.

• Languages of Cyprus

• 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.

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

• Languages of Cyprus
• Languages of Northern Cyprus
• Turkish dialects
• Subject–verb–object languages

• CS1 Turkish-language sources (tr)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles containing Turkish-language text
• Language articles with IETF language tag
• Language articles without speaker estimate
• Dialects of languages with ISO 639-3 code
• Languages without ISO 639-3 code but with Glottolog code
• Articles with unnamed Glottolog code
• Articles with text in Turkic languages
• Pages with plain IPA
• Articles to be expanded from January 2017
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