Küprian

Küprian or Κύπρια Λατίνα (Kypria Latina) is a small Romance language from the island of Cyprus.

Introduction

Unlike most Romance language which grew out of Vulgar Latin on the continent or in Africa, Küprian roots lie in an intelligentsia of educated noblemen and traders on the island, from before the fall of the Empire. These Romans were a more elite initial settlement because:

• Cyprus was strategically important but not a major military frontier
• It was wealthy due to trade and copper mining
• It was culturally prestigious due to its Greek heritage
• It was attractive to wealthy Romans
• It needed administrators for trade
• It had established Greek educational institutions

Unlike the European mainland, Cyprus experienced

• Continuous reinforcement through trade connections with educated Latin speakers
• Early bilingualism with Greek creating a "prestige preservation" effect
• The educated nature of the community helping maintain Classical features

The early history of the language is undocumented, but clearly Classical, given its preservation of vowel length and /h/ so late. By 330 A.D., the island was part of the Byzantine Empire, and surrounded by first Koiné and then Attic Greek speakers. This corresponded to the resurgence of an older form of Greek even, which had a profound effect on the Latin being spoken. Küpria's phases are therefore

• before 330 - Classical Latin
• 330 to 1191 - Early Küprian
• 1192 to 1489 - Lusignan Küprian
• 1489 to 1571 - Venetian Küprian
• 1571 to 1878 - Ottoman "Captivity"
• 1878 onward - (Modern) Küprian

Phonology

Orthography

Küprian is written with polytonic Greek letters and diacritics, like Koiné or Attic. It uses all 22 letters of the Greek alphabet, upper and lower case: Αα Ββ Γγ Δδ Εε Ζζ Ηη Θθ Κκ Λλ Μμ Νν Οο Ππ Ρρ Σσς Ττ Υυ Φφ Χχ Ψψ Ωω. The diacritics are the smooth breathing, the rough breathing, acutes, circumflex, and graves. Certain obscure words use a diaeresis. There are no iota subscripts. While the period and the comma are the same as in Latin script, the semi-colon's effect is written with a middle dot, and the question mark looks like a semi-colon.

Consonants

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal/Velar
Nasal	/m/ μ	/n̪~n/ ν		(/ɲ~ŋ/)
Voiceless Stops	/p/ π	/t̪~t/ τ		/c~k/ κ
Voiced Obstruents	/b~β/ β	/d~ð/ δ		/g~ɣ~ɟ/ γ
Voiceless Fricative	/ɸ/ φ	/θ/ θ	/s/ σ/ς	/ç~x/ χ
Voiced Fricative			/z̠~z/ ζ
Approximant			/j~ʝ/ ι
Rhotic			/ɾ/ ρ
Lateral			/l~ʎ̟/ λ

Not pictured in the table above are the polygraphs Ξ/ξ (ks) and Ψ/ψ (ps). In the above table, the voiced obstruents are β, δ, and γ. The are fricatives intervocalically and finally, but stops utterance-initially and when part of a cluster. The velar consonants and clusters (κ, γ, χ, νκ, νγ, γκ) palatalized before front vowels (i.e. c, ɟ, ç, ɲc, ɲɟ, cɟ). The nasals all assimilate to place of articulation of a following obstruent.

Vowels

Küprian preserves the old Byzantine distinction between /u/ and /y/. Confusingly, /u/ is ο and /y/ is υ. Omega (ω) is the only /o/.

	Front		Back
	Unrounded	Rounded	Rounded
High	/i/ ι, η	/y/ υ	/u/ ο
Mid	/e/ ε		/o/ ω
Low	/a/ α

Stress

Stress is marked with one of three signs, all of which produce the same effect: acute ´, circumflex ῀, or grave `.

Phonotactics

Phonotactics are wildly permissive. Vowel hiatus is generally frowned upon, and is usually indicated with a diaeresis. Complicated consonant clusters are often passed over in adlib conversation, but attempted in printed texts.

Morphophonology

The preterite passive stem is formed through augmentation of the present stem. This amounts to adding an ε before the stem, but if it begins with a vowel, the rules get complicated.

ξ and ψ readily form whenever a σ is added