Emanating from Anatolia and evolved over five centuries, Gibrizlija is the distinct language variety spoken by Cypriots with Ottoman ancestry, as well as by Cypriots who converted to Islam during Ottoman rule. Gibrizlija is understood by expatriate Cypriots living in the UK, America, Australia and other parts of the world.

Gibrizlija consists of a rich blend of Ottoman Turkish and the Yoruk Turkmen language spoken to this day in the Taurus mountains of southern Turkey. In addition Gibrizlija has absorbed influences from Italian and English, as well as from the surrounding principal Cypriot vernacular, Gibreiga, which would have been familiar to most Gibrizlija-speakers.

It is not only in pronunciation and vocabulary that Gibrizlija differs markedly from present-day official Turkish, but also in certain of its basic sounds, syntax and grammar. Linguistic and cultural domination from Turkey has however led to Gibrizlija being regarded as an impure, backward and mangled Turkish dialect rather than a proud and expressive Turkic language in its own right. This attitude applies to other areas of culture and identity of Gibrizlija-speakers, disturbingly extending to a denial of their very right to consider themselves Cypriots.

As a result of the cultural and numerical disadvantage suffered by Gibrizlija-speakers in whichever political entity they have found themselves, little attempt has hitherto been made to codify the Gibrizlija language. To help redress this, with the assistance of Gibrizlija linguistic expertise, the Cypriot Academy has devised a standardised approach to writing Gibrizlija. The methodology used is set out below and is complementary to that for writing Gibreiga, with which Gibrizlija shares many pronunciation similarities:

Latin letters	Pronunciation	Turkish alphabet equivalents
a	u as in up	a
b	b	b
ch	ch as in chap	ç
d	d	d
e	e as in egg	e
f	f	f
g	g as in got	g
h	h	h
i	i as in in; or indistinct	i, ı
	vowel such as e in open
j	j as in jam	c
k	k	k
l	l	l
m	m	m
n	n	n
ng	ng as in anger	-
ny	ny as in canyon	-
o	o as in on	o
oe	e as in her	ö
p	p	p
r	r	r
s	s as in sad	s
sh	sh as in shop	ş
t	t	t
u	u as in put	u
ue	ew as in few	ü
v	v	v
y	y as in yes	y
z	z	z
zh	French j as in jour	j

For clarity it is proposed that double vowels in Gibrizlija are written simply as aa, ee, ii, oo, ooe (for double oe), uu and uue (for double ue). In Turkish, by contrast, a double vowel is indicated by writing ağ after the vowel to be doubled, eg double aa is written ağ.

Turkish does not have the sounds ng and ny, which are common in Gibrizlija and are also found in other Turkic languages such as Tatar and Turkmen.

The Cypriot Academy’s approach to writing Gibrizlija is illustrated below in the Gibrizlija numbers one to ten:

1 – bir
2 – iki
3 – uech
4 – doert
5 – besh
6 – alti
7 – yedi
8 – sekiz
9 – dokuz
10 – on

Back to the top

© Cypriot Academy

Writing Cypriot
 
Gibrizlija
 
Sanna