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. speak in different accents or dialects of English, people in Greece and Cyprus speak in different dialects of Greek. And even though Cyprus is a very small country in comparison to the United States, people in different cities and villages within Cyprus sometimes have their own dialects! They are all speaking the same language, Greek, but some sounds and words are unique to their different dialects. In some cases, people speaking different dialects of the same language might have trouble understanding each other! For example, a colleague told me recently that Greek speakers in the city of Limassol, near where I live, sometimes cannot easily understand Greek speakers from Paphos, a city just 45 minutes away by car!
However, now that I'm visiting the country of Georgia, I don't hear any Greek at all. That's because the primary language here is actually Georgian. It has its own special script that's very different from the Greek alphabet I'm now used to.
