Opinion
By Panagiotis Christias
Lately, public debate over the Cypriot dialect, or is it a language, has grown intense. Respected academics and writers have weighed in: Is Cypriot Greek merely a spoken dialect, or an autonomous language? Should it, or should it not, be taught as a language in Cypriot secondary schools? On these questions, a political philosopher or scientist cannot offer a definitive answer. It is simply not their field.
What they can do is examine such debates critically, from a political perspective. And if one looks closely, one notices something striking: most articles on the so-called “linguistic question” are less about Cypriot Greek itself than about Cypriot politics. Those who argue that Cypriot is a fully fledged language often do so as a way of asserting the distinctiveness of the Cypriot nation compared to the Greek. Essentially, this is an “anti-unionist” argument, a term that no longer carries decisive political weight. Conversely, those who insist that Cypriot Greek is a dialect, too limited to develop logical and critical thinking in students, often derive a “pro-union” argument. They emphasize linguistic unity, which, alongside shared ancestry and religion, is taken to demonstrate that Cypriots are part of the same nation as Greeks and therefore, according to Lord Acton’s theory of nationality, should share a state.
The problem, then, is not primarily linguistic. It lies in the political assumptions that people believe these linguistic positions express. A critical thinker must separate the philological question from the political one, which ultimately is: What is a nation?
This question was famously addressed by the French writer Ernest Renan in his 1882 lecture at the Sorbonne, “What is a Nation?” Renan spoke during a turbulent period for France, twelve years after Alsace and Lorraine were annexed by Germany, following France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the creation of the Second German Empire. The Germans claimed that because the people of these regions spoke a German dialect, were Protestant rather than Catholic like the French, and descended from Germanic tribes, they belonged to the German nation, and therefore to the German state. Renan rejected this ethnographic and racial definition. A nation, he argued, is not defined by race, language, or religion. He was one of the first to resist the neo-Darwinian, racist ideologies of his time.
For Renan, a nation is defined by the will of a people to constitute themselves as a nation or as part of another. He famously described it as a “daily plebiscite.” Nationality is, above all, a matter of choice, a collective decision to belong together. While language, ethnicity, history, and collective memory play a role in this decision, they are not automatic determinants. Many ethnic groups can form a single nation, and a single ethnicity can divide into multiple nations. The fate of a nation is ultimately determined by its people.
Thus, a nation is political, not historical, ethnographic, or racial. Citizens constitute the nation, and the character of a nation is defined by its citizens. The people of Alsace and Lorraine considered themselves French, not German. Many migrated to France after 1870, waiting for the French reconquest in 1918 to return home. Others experienced the annexation as occupation, a tension that contributed to World War I.
Similarly, whether the Cypriot nation is part of the Greek nation or independent is not a philological question. And the use of Standard Modern Greek in schools is not a political question. The Cypriot nation remains Cypriot regardless of the language used in education. Using Standard Greek does not make Cypriots “the same” as Greeks. The Cypriot people have already determined the character of their nation: they are an autonomous nation-state within the European Union.
The question of whether Cypriot Greek is a dialect or a language should remain purely linguistic, free from political interpretation. Only then can research be conducted rigorously, and decisions about the role of Standard Greek in schools be made rationally, without passion, ideology, or confusion between language and nationhood.
Panagiotis Christias is Associate Professor of Political and Social Philosophy at the University of Cyprus.
