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Karaim
Sign in to saveAlso known as Karaim language, Lashon Kedar
Turkic language spoken by the Crimean Karaites
Key facts
- Native to
- Crimea , Lithuania , Poland
- Ethnicity
- Crimean Karaites
- Native speakers
- 80 (2014)
- Language family
- Turkic Common Turkic Kipchak Kypchak–Cuman Karaim
- Writing system
- Cyrillic script , Latin script , Hebrew alphabet
- Recognised minority language in
- Poland , Ukraine , Russia
- Iso 639 3
- kdr
- Glottolog
- kara1464
- Elp
- Karaim
via Wikipedia infobox
~19 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Karaim language (Crimean dialect: къарай тили, qaray tili; Trakai dialect: karaj tili), also known by its Hebrew name Lashon Kedar (Hebrew: לשון קדר, lit. 'language of the nomads'), is a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak group, with Hebrew influences, similarly to Yiddish or Judaeo-Spanish. It is presently spoken by only a few dozen Crimean Karaites (Qrimqaraylar) in Lithuania, Poland, Crimea, and Galicia in Ukraine. The three main dialects are those of Crimea, Trakai-Vilnius and Lutsk-Halych, all of which are critically endangered. The Lithuanian dialect of Karaim is spoken mainly in the town of Trakai by a small community living there since the 14th century.
There is a chance the language will survive in Trakai as a result of official support and because of its appeal to tourists coming to the Trakai Island Castle, where Crimean Karaites are presented as the castle's ancient defenders.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Karaim” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.