Cylingo documents words shared by Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot dialects
Childhood friends Doruk Ekingen and Ugurcan Karsili created a digital platform documenting more than 2,000 words shared across the island’s dialects.
Nicosia, Cyprus. Childhood friends Doruk Ekingen and Ugurcan Karsili have developed Cylingo, a bicommunal digital platform to record and preserve words shared by Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot dialects. Their research has identified more than 2,000 words with the same pronunciation and meaning in both dialects.
From a conversation to a dictionary
Ekingen told the Sunday Mail that the project began after he and Karsili encountered a Cypriot word neither recognised during an online conversation. Unable to find it through an online search, Karsili said he wished there were a Cypriot language database they could consult. Ekingen suggested creating an online dictionary themselves.
An electrical engineering student, Ekingen taught himself programming to build the platform. He said the shared words show a linguistic closeness obscured by decades of partition.
Earlier influences
The friends’ interest had also been shaped by a 2018 article in the Turkish Cypriot newspaper Ozgur Gazete reporting that the Turkish Language Organisation had restricted the use of about 180 Cypriot words in official media. Ekingen said the words were used every day and were part of their identity.
A year later, while taking part in the Cyprus Friendship Programme in the United States, they spoke with Greek Cypriots and were struck by how many words they had in common.
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