Cyprus is a historical melting pot, and nowhere shows it more plainly than the way people speak. The two official languages are Greek and Turkish, but what most Cypriots actually speak is the Greek Cypriot dialect — used by more than seven hundred thousand people on the island and several hundred thousand more abroad.
The dialect is a record of the island’s history. Every occupier left vocabulary behind, and the dialect absorbed it without losing its own shape. It descends from Koine Greek and retains features of Ancient Greek that standard modern Greek has shed — which is why a Greek visitor can find a Cypriot village conversation genuinely hard to follow.