Krymchak language

Krymchak
кърымчах тыльы
Native to	Crimea, Israel, Turkey
Ethnicity	1,800 Krymchaks (2007)[1]
Native speakers	200 (2007)[1]
Language family	Turkic Common Turkic Kipchak Kipchak–Cuman Krymchak
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Ukraine[2]
Language codes
ISO 639-3	jct
Glottolog	krym1236[3]
Linguasphere	part of 44-AAB-a

The Krymchak language (кърымчах тыльы) is a moribund Turkic language spoken in Crimea by the Krymchak people. It is often considered to be a Crimean Tatar dialect. The language is sometimes called Judeo-Crimean Tatar.

Like most Jewish languages, it contains a large number of Hebrew loanwords. Before the Soviet era, it was written using Hebrew characters. In the Soviet Union in the 1930s, it was written with the Uniform Turkic Alphabet (a variant of the Latin script), like Crimean Tatar and Karaim. Now it is written in the Cyrillic script.

The community was decimated during the Holocaust. When in May 1944 almost all Crimean Tatars were deported to Soviet Uzbekistan, many speakers of Krymchak were among them, and some remained in Uzbekistan. Nowadays the language is almost extinct. According to the Ukrainian census of 2001, less than 785 Krymchak people remain in Crimea, and just about a hundred people still can speak the language.

Krymchak	Turkish	English
kılıç	kılıç	sword
arıslan	arslan	lion
yaka	yaka	collar
yulduz	yıldız	star
yaş	yaş	age
yol	yol	road
kalkan	kalkan	shield
yanhı	yeni	new
yel	yel	wind
tülkü	tilki	fox
sıçan	sıçan	mouse
i̇mırtha	yumurta	egg
taş	taş	stone
altın	altın	gold
tengiz	deniz	sea
kumuş	gümüş	silver
ögüz	öküz	ox
koy	koyun	sheep
suv	su	water
at	at	horse
agaç	ağaç	tree
yeşil	yeşil	green

References

1. Krymchak at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. "To which languages does the Charter apply?". European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Council of Europe. p. 3. Retrieved 2014-04-03.
3. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Krymchak". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.