In Cyprus, the Cylingo platform collected over 2,000 shared dialect words — Cyprus Mail
In Cyprus, the Cylingo digital platform, created by representatives of the island’s two communities, has documented more than 2,000 words shared by the Cypriot Greek and Cypriot Turkish dialects. These words have the same pronunciation and meaning, so they do not require translation between the two language varieties, Cyprus Mail reports.
The project was founded by childhood friends Doruk Ekingen and Uğurcan Karsılı. The idea emerged after they came across a Cypriot word in an online exchange whose meaning they could not find on the internet. In 2024, they began collecting vocabulary from their grandparents, receiving more than a hundred initial entries for the database in a single day.
Verification of dialect vocabulary
The Cylingo team verifies every submission to determine whether a word belongs specifically to the Cypriot varieties of Greek and Turkish. The research also draws on previous academic work, including a dictionary of shared Cypriot Greek and Cypriot Turkish dialects that recorded 3,425 common words.
According to Ekingen, previous counts also included vocabulary common in standard Greek or standard Turkish, whereas Cylingo applies a stricter criterion. According to an estimate by linguist Orhan Kabataş, cited by the team, the total number of shared words could potentially reach 9,000, but this is a projection rather than the number of entries already published.
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Games and artificial intelligence tools
In addition to the dictionary, Cylingo has created seven interactive games for practicing the dialects: four for Cypriot Turkish and three for Cypriot Greek. The platform also contains pronunciation guides prepared on the basis of academic sources and materials on the phonetics of both dialects.
The team’s next task is to develop an artificial intelligence tool that is intended to recognize and accurately reproduce both Cypriot dialects. Ekingen noted that general AI services often confuse them with standard Greek or Turkish because of the limited amount of digital material. For the model, he uses Cylingo sources and authentic texts written in the Cypriot Greek and Cypriot Turkish dialects.
Linguist Spyros Armostis of the University of Cyprus described Cylingo as an initiative useful for preserving linguistic heritage. He stressed that the vitality of a dialect is determined not only by its vocabulary, but also by the preservation of its grammar, syntax and phonology.
