Tuesday, May 30, 2006

A New(Old) Arabic

I was very surprised to know that for 700 hundred years, an Arabic language variant existed without most people's knowledge. It is called Cypriot Maronite Arabic. It is a spoken language and is a combo of Arabic and Greek. And the main reason most people do not know about it is that it is spoken in the northern part of Cyprus by only 130 people or so. As can be guessed from the name, all the speakers are Maronite, who 700 years ago emigrated from Lebanon to the northern part of Cyprus.

http://www.cypnet.co.uk/ncyprus/people/cypmaronites/dialect.html

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