1. Introduction

Cypriot Arabic is a non-literate vernacular that has been spoken natively in Cyprus for probably well over a millenium and continues to be used by a community of about 1,300 Cypriot Maronites, i.e. the former inhabitants of Kormakiti, or Korucam in Turkish, resettled in the Greek sector of Nicosia, in Larnaca and Limassol, in the aftermath of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974.

Reference to a Cypriot variety of Arabi…