Italian colonists in the Dodecanese the Leros town of Lakki (founded by the Italians as "Portolago"), which remains a prime example of Italian Rationalism. From 1923 to 1936, governor Mario Lago was able to integrate the Greek, Turkish and Ladino Jewish communities of the island of Rhodes with the Italian colonists. Lago's term of office constituted what might in retrospective be called the "Golden Period" of the Italian Dodecanese, with the economy booming and a relatively harmonious society. In the 1936 Italian census of the Dodecanese islands, the total population was 129,135, of which 7,015 were Italians. Nearly 80% of the Italian colonists lived in
Cypriot Greek varieties, along with the dialects of the Dodecanese and Chios (with which it shares several phonological phenomena). Though Cypriot Greek tends to be regarded as a dialect by its speakers, it is unintelligible to speakers of Standard Modern Greek without adequate prior exposure. Greek-speaking Cypriots are diglossic in the vernacular Cypriot Greek (the "low" variety) and Standard Modern Greek (the "high" variety). Cypriot Greek is itself a dialect continuum with an emerging koine. argue that diglossia has given way to a "post-diglossic [dialectal] continuum [...] a quasi-continuous spread of overlapping varieties". Studies of the phonology of Cypriot Greek are few