A LINGUISTICS professor in Turkey has identified 738 words of Turkish origin used in everyday language by Greek Cypriots.
According to the study by Ridvan Ozturk, 131 of the words describe items and tools, 61 describe different foods, 56 character descriptions, 34 professions and 22 plants, among other uses.
The words include kebab, bakkali, dolmas, sokaki and pastourmas, three well-known dishes in Cyprus.
In his study, Ozturk said it was natural that after living together for hundreds of years, that Greek and Turkish Cypriots would pick up words from each others’ languages. There were other words that originally came from Arabic and filtered into Turkish and then adopted by Greek Cypriots, he said.
“In the Greek-Cypriot dialect we meet Turkish root words but also words that emanate from other languages,” Ozturk was quoted as saying.
He said many of the words are still used on a daily basis while others have disappeared from the dialect.
Nese Yiasin, poet and lecturer at the University of Cyprus told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that she regularly teaches her students about the common words in both languages. She said the commonly used word ‘rusfeti’, which means nepotism in Cyprus, is a Turkish word.
“We heard it a lot during the elections,” said Yiasin who also ran for parliament a week ago.
“There are a lot of common words in both languages in Cyprus,” she said adding that there were many Greek words also used by Turkish Cypriots such as ‘pantopoula’, which she said means bazaar in the north.
Niasin said that most Greek Cypriots were aware of which words originated in Turkish. “It sounds foreign to them,” she said.
“There are Greek words used by Turkish Cypriots that they think are Greek and Turkish words used by Greek Cypriots that they think are Turkish when in fact they might have come from Latin,” Niasin added.
A Turkish Cypriot website identifies 200 Greek words used by Turkish Cypriots, including ‘angoni’ meaning grandchild, ‘bango’ a workbench and ‘fanella’ a jumper or tee shirt.
However most of the Greek and Turkish words common to the Cypriot dialect are nowadays more well known among the older generation.
I think the professor forgot a category of Turkish words in Greek Cypriot dialect: Swearing
Can you list some words of Cypriot dialect that are Turkish? I will start: Asihtir 
