Italian colonists in the Dodecanese colonists of Rhodes. In the Treaty of Paris in 1947, the islands were ceded to Greece. For the nearly 8,000 Italian colonists, after the Italian defeat in World War II, started a process of return to Italy and successive disappearance. The Dodecanese officially passed from Italy to Greece in 1947, and in that year all the Italian schools were closed. Some of the Italian colonists remained in Rhodes and were quickly assimilated. Actually only a few dozen old colonists remain, but the influence of their legacy is evident in the relative diffusion of the Italian language mainly in Rhodes and
Greek Cypriots all major towns and countless villages. The everyday language of Greek Cypriots is Cypriot Greek, a dialect of Modern Greek. It shares certain characteristics with varieties of the Dodecanese and Chios, as well as those of Asia Minor. Greek Cypriots are generally educated in Standard Modern Greek, though they tend to speak it with an accent and preserve some Cypriot Greek grammar. Greek Cypriots Greek Cypriots (, ) are the ethnic Greek population of Cyprus, forming the island's largest ethnolinguistic community. According to the 2011 Cypriot census, 659,115 citizens in the area controlled by the Republic of Cyprus, which excluding