# Cypriot Turkish/Greek: barbet & rusfet/parpetes & rusfeti



## Chazzwozzer

Hi,

*Turkish - Greek*
barbet - parpetes
rusfet - rusfeti

Can anybody please tell me what these two words mean? Are they used to mean the same meaning in both dialects? I suspect "barbet" means "berbat" but I'm not sure and for rusfet, well, I have no idea.

Thanks for any help.


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## ireney

Hmmmm I am not sure about parpetes. Never heard that before (maybe some Cypriot idiom?) Can you write it in Greek characters please? (unless someone else recognises it)

Now about rusfeti. My etymological dictionary (you know, the one I use all the time  ) says that it comes from the turkish rüşvet. It Greek, rusfeti means when a politicians (and anyone in power) is doing a favour to a friend or a person that has payed them/ done them a favour.

i.e. If a minister made sure that his best friend's kid was hired, not because te kid was worth it or anything but because it was his friend child, that would be a rusfeti.


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## Chazzwozzer

ireney said:


> Hmmmm I am not sure about parpetes. Never heard that before (maybe some Cypriot idiom?) Can you write it in Greek characters please? (unless someone else recognises it)


I wish I could, unfortunately I only know this way. I'd be glad if someone could.



ireney said:


> Now about rusfeti. My etymological dictionary (you know, the one I use all the time  ) says that it comes from the turkish rüşvet. It Greek, rusfeti means when a politicians (and anyone in power) is doing a favour to a friend or a person that has payed them/ done them a favour.
> 
> i.e. If a minister made sure that his best friend's kid was hired, not because te kid was worth it or anything but because it was his friend child, that would be a rusfeti.


Ah, right! Rüşvet...

For such a situation in your minister example, we'd say it's a torpil. (comes from French, _torpille_) However, your first example also describes how rüşvet works in Turkey. If we ever describe something as rüşvet, then there must be money or a gift involved and it doesn't matter even the people know each other or friends. I think Turkish usage is somewhat different from Greek.

Thanks, ireney.


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## MissPrudish

Ireney parpetes is the cypriot way of saying φαβορίτες.
I will leave this to you to translate because I really can't think of an english equivalent-it might exist but I don't know it perhaps? I really don't know


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## ireney

Chazz it's almost identical. It's only in cases of close friends where no money is needed. In all other cases it's either money or some other kind of debt (i.e if he REALLY helped him get elected)

MissPrudish thank you!!

Φαβορίτες is sideboards, whiskers Like these hehe!


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## MissPrudish

Hehe one picture speaks a thousand words doesnt it?


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## Chazzwozzer

ireney said:


> Chazz it's almost identical. It's only in cases of close friends where no money is needed. In all other cases it's either money or some other kind of debt (i.e if he REALLY helped him get elected)
> 
> MissPrudish thank you!!
> 
> Φαβορίτες is sideboards, whiskers Like these hehe!



So the only difference is in cases where no money is needed. If no money is needed and politican or officer whoever is doing it for the sake of his friend, then it's said to be a torpil and that highly placed guy is their torpil, which is called _friend at court_ in English. And for torpil thing, I think they say oracle in English. If am not wrong you just say rusfeti for both cases. 

Φαβορίτες is not parpetes, right? It's just its equivalent. Then how do you write parpetes in Greek characters? (I'd also be glad if somebody could write Φαβορίτες in Latin characters, as well.)

I can't find barbet meaning sideburns on Google, is there a Cypriot that can confirm it's absolutely the same and correct spelling?

Thank you MissPrudish and ireney.


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## MissPrudish

Chazzwozzer φαβορίτες (favorites) is the greek version of parpetes (or even parpe*tt*es). I don't think it is wise to write this in greek characters because the word doesn't probably exist in normal greek language, it is probably one of the cypriot words we use. But-just for the record-it would be παρπέτες.

Perhaps barbet is only used by turkish cypriots-but I am sure they do use the word this way. And by the way what is the turkish version of favorites? Does it sound a bit like barbet at least?


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## Chazzwozzer

By Greek characters, I mean, of course, how you spell it there in Cyprus. You don't write it as parpetes, do you? Seems like I'm missing a point here, though. 

For sideburns, we say favori (again from French, _favori_) and have never heard barbet or any other words sound like barbet meaning sideburns.

By the way, is barbet derived from parpetes?


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## MissPrudish

I would say that parpetes comes from barbet actually.
Well, we do not write such words anywhere, we might use them in our everyday speech but to write something we always use the correct greek words, not the ones that we use in our dialect. In this case we would use φαβορίτες.
Of course, there are poems and text written in cypriot dialect (in this case they write the words exactly as we pronounce them, in greek characters, but I don't think you'll come across this word anywhere). I think the same goes for turkish cypriots-if they would write it somewhere officially let's say, they would use favori.

I think that parpetes/barbet might have something to do with μπαρμπέρης (barberis) which means barber and comes from the italian barbiere but I don't know why it is said to be used for sideburns. 
We have many words that do not exist in the official greek language and are just part of our dialect, usually taken from many other languages and mixing or 'polishing up' in order to make them sound more 'greek'-i.e by adding a last syllable to a turkish word (barbet-barbet*es*). But exactly because these words are mostly used in speech and not in literature or poetry for example, you can't really tell how the words were made up. They are just part of the cypriot dialect.


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## ics

Hi Chazzwozzer, 
I have never heard “parpetes”, so I cannot help you…. 
As Ireney and Miss Prudish said, sideboards is φαβορίτες in Greek. The Greek word for φαβορίτες, according to my dictionary is _παραγναθίδες_ but no one use it! 


MissPrudish said:


> I think that parpetes/barbet might have something to do with μπαρμπέρης (barberis) which means barber and comes from the italian barbiere


In Italian “barba” means beard and φαβορίτες is “basette” (the small ones) and “favoriti” (the long ones like in the picture edited by Ireney). 
If this could be useful to you, barbetta (singular) –barbette (plural) in Italian means _small beard_ (the ending –etta is the diminutive form).

Hope that makes sense to you!


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## dhavlos

Im a british-born cypriot...and i thought 'barbetes'/'barberetes' was the proper name for sideburns! oops

my 2cents.


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