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The Crimean Tatar language (), also known as Crimean () and Crimean Turkish is the language of the Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars

Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic peoples ethnic group originally residing in Crimea. They speak the Crimean Tatar language. They are not to be confused with the Volga Tatars....
. It is spoken in Crimea
Crimea

Crimea or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is an autonomous republic of Ukraine located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name....
, Central Asia (mainly in Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan , is a Landlocked_country#Doubly_landlocked_country country in Central Asia, formerly part of the Soviet Union....
), and the Crimean Tatar diaspora
Crimean Tatar diaspora

The Crimean Tatar diaspora dates back to the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 1783, after which Crimean Tatars were forced to emigration in a series of waves spanning the period from 1783 to 1917....
s in Turkey
Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in southwest Asia and Thrace in the Balkans region of Southern Europe....
, Romania
Romania

Romania is a country located in Southeastern Europe Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian Mountains, bordering on the Black Sea....
, Bulgaria
Bulgaria

The state of Bulgaria , Scientific transliteration Balgarija, officially the Republic of Bulgaria has played a significant role in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe for over fourteen centuries....
. It is not to be confused with the Tatar language
Tatar language

The Tatar language is a Turkic languages language spoken by the Tatars....
.

Number of speakers
Today, more than 260,000 Crimean Tatars live in Crimea, and approximately 150,000 are still in exile in Central Asia (mainly in Uzbekistan).






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The Crimean Tatar language (), also known as Crimean () and Crimean Turkish is the language of the Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars

Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic peoples ethnic group originally residing in Crimea. They speak the Crimean Tatar language. They are not to be confused with the Volga Tatars....
. It is spoken in Crimea
Crimea

Crimea or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is an autonomous republic of Ukraine located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name....
, Central Asia (mainly in Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan , is a Landlocked_country#Doubly_landlocked_country country in Central Asia, formerly part of the Soviet Union....
), and the Crimean Tatar diaspora
Crimean Tatar diaspora

The Crimean Tatar diaspora dates back to the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 1783, after which Crimean Tatars were forced to emigration in a series of waves spanning the period from 1783 to 1917....
s in Turkey
Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in southwest Asia and Thrace in the Balkans region of Southern Europe....
, Romania
Romania

Romania is a country located in Southeastern Europe Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian Mountains, bordering on the Black Sea....
, Bulgaria
Bulgaria

The state of Bulgaria , Scientific transliteration Balgarija, officially the Republic of Bulgaria has played a significant role in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe for over fourteen centuries....
. It is not to be confused with the Tatar language
Tatar language

The Tatar language is a Turkic languages language spoken by the Tatars....
.

Number of speakers


Today, more than 260,000 Crimean Tatars live in Crimea, and approximately 150,000 are still in exile in Central Asia (mainly in Uzbekistan). An estimated 5 million people of Crimean origin live in Turkey, descendants of those who emigrated in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Smaller Crimean Tatar communities are also found in Romania (24,000), Bulgaria (3,000), Poland
Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian Enclave and exclave, to the north....
, Finland
Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland , is a Nordic countries situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland....
, and the United States. It is one of seriously endangered languages in Europe.

Dialects


Each of the three subethnic groups of the Crimean Tatars has its own dialect. The dialect of the Nogays - former inhabitants of the Crimean steppe (should not be confused with Nogai people
Nogais

The Nogai people are a Turkic peoples ethnic group in northern Dagestan and neighbouring areas of Chechnya and Stavropol Krai, who speak the Turkic languages Nogai language....
) - is of Kypchak origin, Yaliboylus, who lived on the southern coast of Crimea before 1944, speak an Oghuz
Oghuz languages

The Oghuz languages, a major branch of the Turkic languages, are spoken by more than 110 million people in an area spanning from the Balkan peninsula to China....
 dialect very close to Turkish
Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
, and the middle dialect of the Tats
Tats

The Tat are an Iranian languages-speaking ethnic group in the Caucasus. The Muslim Tats are considered an Iranian peoples ethnic group in the Caucasus and the Jewish Tats have adopted the language of Tat language in ancient times....
 from the Crimean Mountains (should not be confused with Tat people
Tats

The Tat are an Iranian languages-speaking ethnic group in the Caucasus. The Muslim Tats are considered an Iranian peoples ethnic group in the Caucasus and the Jewish Tats have adopted the language of Tat language in ancient times....
) is a mixture of the two. This dialect is a direct descendant of the Cuman language
Cuman language

Cuman was a Turkic language spoken by the Cumans and was similar to today's Crimean Tatar language. It is documented in several medieval works, including the Codex Cumanicus....
, but it has been strongly influenced by the Oghuz Turkic. The modern Crimean Tatar written language is based on this middle dialect because the Tats comprise about 55% of the total Crimean Tatar population and their dialect is equally intelligible to the speakers of the others.

History


The forming of the Crimean Tatar spoken dialects began with the first Turkic invasions to Crimea and ended during the period of the Crimean Khanate
Crimean Khanate

The Crimean Khanate or the Khanate of Crimea was a Crimean Tatars state from 1441 to 1783. Its native name was Crimean Yurt . The khanate was by far the longest-lived of the Turkic peoples khanates that succeeded the empire of the Golden Horde....
. However, the official written languages of the Crimean Khanate were Chagatai
Chagatai language

The Chagatai language is an extinct Turkic language which was once widely spoken in Central Asia, and remained the shared literary language there until the early twentieth century....
 and Ottoman Turkish
Ottoman Turkish language

Ottoman Turkish is the variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire. It contains extensive borrowings from Arabic language and Persian language languages and was written in a variant of the Arabic script....
. After the Islamization
Islamization

Islamization or Islamification means the process of a society's conversion to the religion of Islam, or a neologism meaning an increase in observance by an already Muslim society....
, Crimean Tatars wrote with a Persian-Arab script.

In 1876, the different Turkish Crimean dialects were made into a uniform written language by Ismail Gaspirali
Ismail Gaspirali

Ismail Gaspirali was a famous Crimean Tatars intellectualism, educator, publisher and politician. He was one of the first Muslim intellectuals in the Russian Empire, who realized the need for education and cultural reform and modernization of the Turkic peoples and Islamic communities....
. A preference was given to the Oghuz dialect of the Yaliboylus not to break the link between the Crimeans and the Turks of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299?1923. It was Treaty of Lausanne by the Republic of Turkey, which was officially proclaimed on October 29, 1923....
. In 1928, it was reoriented to the middle dialect.

In 1928, the alphabet was replaced with the Uniform Turkic Alphabet
Uniform Turkic Alphabet

The Uniform Turkic Alphabet was a Latin alphabet used by non-Slavic peoples of the USSR in the 1930s. The alphabet used ligatures from Ja?alif as it was also a part of the uniform alphabet....
 based on the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
. The Uniform Turkic Alphabet was itself replaced in 1938 by a modified Cyrillic alphabet
Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic alphabet is a family of alphabets, subsets of which are used by five Slavic languages national languages as well as non-Slavic . It is also used by many other languages of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Siberia and other languages in the past....
. Since 1990s, the script is in the process of being replaced with a Latin version again, but the Cyrillic is still widely used (mainly in published literature and newspapers). The current Latin-based Crimean Tatar alphabet is the same as the Turkish alphabet
Turkish alphabet

The Turkish alphabet is a Latin-based alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, a certain number of which have been adapted or modified for the phonetic requirements of the language....
 with two additional characters: Ñ
N

N is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled en ....
 ñ and Q
Q

Q is the seventeenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled cue ....
 q.

Crimean Tatar was the native language of the poet Bekir Çoban-zade.

Current situation


According to the constitution of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, as published in Russian by its Verkhovna Rada
Verkhovna Rada of Crimea

The Verkhovna Rada of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is the 100-member unicameral parliament of the Ukraine territory the Crimea. The Verkhovna Rada of Crimea is regulated according to a legislation passed by the Verkhovna Rada on February 10, 1998....
 (see ), Russian and Crimean Tatar languages enjoy a "protected" (Russian - ?????????????? ... ??????) status; every citizen is entitled, at his request (Russian ???????????), to receive government documents, such as "Passport, Birth certificate and others" in Crimean Tatar. According to the constitution of Ukraine, however, Ukrainian is the only official language in all of Ukraine, so the recognition of those languages is a matter of political and legal debate.

Before the Sürgün, the deportation of Crimean Tatars to the Uzbek SSR
Uzbek SSR

The Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Uzbek SSR for short, was one of the republics of the Soviet Union since its creation in 1924....
 (18 May 1944), it had an official language status in the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic

Crimean Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic was created as part of RSFSR within the Crimean Peninsula, its capital being Simferopol. The official languages were Crimean Tatar language and Russian....
.

Writing systems


Crimean Tatar Latin alphabet



 â symbol is not considered to be a separate letter.

Crimean Tatar Cyrillic alphabet



??, ??, ?? and ?? are separate letters.

Crimean Tatar in comparison with other languages


Because of its history, this language has often been counted as being descended from Kypchak
Kypchak language

Kypchak language may refer to:*Kypchak languages, a group of Turkic languages*The extinct Kipchak language ...
 Turkic. Actually, Crimean Tatar is similar to both Kypchak and Oghuz
Oghuz languages

The Oghuz languages, a major branch of the Turkic languages, are spoken by more than 110 million people in an area spanning from the Balkan peninsula to China....
 Turkic languages. A Crimean Tatar speaker can understand languages of both Kypchak and Oghuz origin. Among the living Turkic languages, the closest to Crimean Tatar are Azerbaijani
Azerbaijani language

Azerbaijani is a language belonging to the Turkic languages language family, spoken in southwestern Asia, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran....
, Turkish
Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
, Urum
Urum language

Urum is a Turkic language spoken by several thousand people who inhabit a few villages in the Southeastern Ukraine and in diaspora communities world wide....
 of the Oghuz group, Kumyk
Kumyk language

Kumyk is a Turkic languages, spoken by about 365,000 speakers in the Dagestan republic of Russian Federation.Yir?i Qazaq is usually considered to be a founder of Kumyk literature....
, and Karachay-Balkar
Karachay-Balkar language

The Karachay-Balkar language is a Turkic language spoken by the Karachays and Balkars. It is divided into two dialects: Karachay which pronounces two phonemes as and , and Balkar, which pronounces the corresponding phonemes as and ....
 of the Kypchak group. Crimean Karaim
Karaim language

The Karaim language is a Turkic languages with Hebrew language influences, in a similar manner to Yiddish language or Ladino language. It is spoken by Crimean Karaites - ethnic Turkic adherents of Karaite Judaism in Crimea, Lithuania, Poland and western Ukraine....
 and Krymchak
Krymchak language

The Krymchak language Turkic Languages is the language spoken in Crimea by the Krymchaks. It is often considered to be a Crimean Tatar language dialect....
 languages are often considered variants of Crimean Tatar. It is not closely related to Tatar
Tatar language

The Tatar language is a Turkic languages language spoken by the Tatars....
.

Crimean Tatar and Turkish

The following newspaper report compares the Crimean Tatar and Turkish languages:

Crimean Tatar Turkish English
Meclis Haberleri 10.09.2003// Qirimtatar Milliy Meclisiniñ 120-ci toplasuvi olip keçti 2003 senesi sentâbr 7 künü Aqmescitteki Islâm Merkeziniñ binasinda Qirimtatar Milliy Meclisiniñ 120-ci toplasuvi olip keçti. Toplasuvda... Meclis Haberleri 10.09.2003// Kirim Tatar Millî Meclisi'nin 120. toplantisi gerçeklesti 7 Eylül 2003 günü Akmescit'teki Islam Merkezi'nin binasinda Kirim Tatar Millî Meclisi'nin 120. toplantisi gerçeklesti. Toplantida... Assembly News 10.09.2003// 120th meeting of Crimean Tatar National Assembly was held On 7 September 2003, 120th meeting of Crimean Tatar National Assembly was held at the Islamic Centre building in Simferopol. At the meeting...


Crimean Tatar and Tatar


Because of its common name, Crimean Tatar is sometimes mistaken to be a dialect of the Tatar language
Tatar language

The Tatar language is a Turkic languages language spoken by the Tatars....
. Although these tongues are related (as both are Turkic), the Kypchak tongues closest to Crimean Tatar are (as was mentioned above) Kumyk
Kumyk language

Kumyk is a Turkic languages, spoken by about 365,000 speakers in the Dagestan republic of Russian Federation.Yir?i Qazaq is usually considered to be a founder of Kumyk literature....
 and Karachay-Balkar
Karachay-Balkar language

The Karachay-Balkar language is a Turkic language spoken by the Karachays and Balkars. It is divided into two dialects: Karachay which pronounces two phonemes as and , and Balkar, which pronounces the corresponding phonemes as and ....
, not the Tatar language.

Bibliography

  • Árpád Berta. 1998. "West Kipchak Languages," The Turkic Languages. Ed. Lars Johanson & Éva Ágnes Csató. Routledge Language Family Descriptions. Routledge. Pp. 301-317.


External links

  • Wiktionary's category of Crimean Tatar words


Dictionaries