By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support great journalism.
Only 900 speakers of the Sanna language remain. Now Cyprus' Maronites are mounting a comeback
CYP VANISHING LANGUAGE 20250524cr_1920x1080.jpg
Only about 900 people in the world speak Cypriot Maronite Arabic. The offshoot of Syrian Arabic had been passed on orally over the centuries but now is at risk of extinction, according to the Council of Europe’s minority language experts. But the Maronite community in Cyprus is fighting back with help from the Cypriot government and the European Union. - photo by AP video Petros Karadjias, produced by Menelaos Hadjicostis and Theodora Tongas
KORMAKITIS, Cyprus (AP) — Ash dangled precariously from Iosif Skordis' cigarette as he reminisced with fellow villagers in a language on the edge of extinction, one that partly traces its roots to the language Jesus Christ once spoke. The 97-year-old Skordis is one of only 900 people in the world who speak Cypriot Maronite Arabic, or Sanna. Today, his village of Kormakitis is the last bastion of a language once spoken by tens of thousands of people across dozens of villages.