Ready to learn five Cypriot Greek words for “cold”? I bet you could use them to describe New York right now, too, so here you go: κρύο, κρυιάδα, σαγή, παγονιά, and my personal favorite, σώφος (pronounced “SO-fos”), which people use to laughingly say that it’s “so cold I’m dying!” (I’ve taken to using that word a lot lately since very few Cypriot buildings have central heating the way they do in the States.) Of those five words, only “κρύο” is used in the formal Greek language that is taught in schools. The other four words are all unique to the Cypriot dialect and therefore can't be found in any dictionary I've checked, so I can't even be sure I'm spelling them correctly. "What’s a dialect?" you may be wondering. Let me explain! Have you ever heard Americans from different parts of the country speak? Have you noticed how they sometimes use different words for the same thing or pronounce the same word differently? For example, my dad is from Minnesota, where he grew up saying words like “pop” for soda, and where he pronounced “creek” as “crik” and “roof” and “root” with the same “oo” sound as in “foot.” Those are all ways of speaking that are different from the ones most often used in my hometown in Florida. Just as people from different parts of the U.S.
