Krymchak language

Infobox Language
name=Krymchak
nativename=кърымчах тыльы
states=flag|Crimea
TUR
speakers= 785
familycolor=Altaic
fam1=Altaic [" [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90009] Ethnologue"] (controversial)
fam2=Turkic
fam3=Kypchak
fam4=Kypchak-Cuman
iso3=jct

The Krymchak language (кърымчах тыльы) Turkic Languages is the language spoken in Crimea by the Krymchak people. It is often considered to be a Crimean Tatar dialect. The language is sometimes referred to as 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 this language was written with the Uniform Turkic Alphabet (a variant of the Latin alphabet), like Crimean Tatar and Karaim). Now it is written in 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.

References

External links

* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=jct Ethnologue report]