Grenglish: New understandings of the linguistic varieties of the British Greek Cypriot diaspora
Conference item
Charalambidou, A. and Karatsareas, P. 2021. Grenglish: New understandings of the linguistic varieties of the British Greek Cypriot diaspora. Approaches to Migration, Language & Identity (AMLI) 2021. University of Sussex 09 - 11 Jun 2021
Title | Grenglish: New understandings of the linguistic varieties of the British Greek Cypriot diaspora |
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Authors | Charalambidou, A. and Karatsareas, P. |
Abstract | We present findings from the Grenglish Project, a public engagement initiative that brought together members of the UK’s Greek Cypriot diaspora in a crowdsourcing effort to document linguistic material that reflected the community’s linguistic history. This presentation examines British Greek Cypriot understand and view their own community’s linguistic variety. The material submitted to the project website (https://www.grenglish.org/) include English loanwords that were integrated into the morphological system of Cypriot Greek by the addition of native derivational and inflectional suffixes (πάσον /páson/ ‘bus’ and πασέρης /paséris/ ‘bus driver’) and phonological adaptations of placenames of significance to the UK’s Greek Cypriot community (Φίσμπουρι Ππάρκ/Fishbury Park ‘Finsbury Park’). These widely used morphological and phonological adaptations, typically labelled Grenglish, are collectively recognised as a key part of a new linguistic variety unique to the UK’s Cypriot Greek speakers and indexical of the language, history and heritage of UK’s Greek Cypriot migrant community (Gardner-Chloros 1992, Papapavlou & Pavlou 2001). However, material contributed to the Grenglish website also included Standard Modern Greek and Cypriot Greek terms, as well as puns and wordplay and even adaptations of Cypriot Greek words to English morphology (Karatsareas & Charalambidou forthcoming). Consequently, the boundaries between UK Cypriot Greek, Standard Modern Greek and Cypriot Greek seems to be fuzzy and are explicitly contested by our informants. We consider the implications of the project’s findings for the status of British Cypriot Greek as a variety on its own right and address the ideological and attitudinal factors that shape the prospects for its intergenerational transmission. |
Keywords | diasporic languages, UK Cypriots, morphological adaptation, language attitudes, Grenglish |
Middlesex University Theme | Creativity, Culture & Enterprise |
Research Group | English Language and Literature |
Conference | Approaches to Migration, Language & Identity (AMLI) 2021 |
Publication process dates | |
Deposited | 20 Dec 2022 |
Accepted | 31 Mar 2021 |
Completed | 09 Jun 2021 |
Output status | Published |
Language | English |
https://repository.mdx.ac.uk/item/8q349
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