Crimean Tatar language
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| Crimean Tatar Qırımtatar tili |
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| Spoken in: | Crimea (Ukraine), Turkey, Uzbekistan, Romania, Bulgaria | |
| Region: | Black Sea | |
| Total speakers: | about 300,000 | |
| Language family: | Altaic[1] (controversial) Turkic Kypchak/Oghuz Crimean Tatar |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | crh | |
| ISO 639-3: | crh | |
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| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
The Crimean Tatar language (Qırımtatar tili, Qırımtatarca), also known as Crimean (Qırım tili, Qırımca) and Crimean Turkish (Qırım Türkçesi) is the language of the Crimean Tatars. It is spoken in Crimea, Central Asia (mainly in Uzbekistan), and the Crimean Tatar diasporas in Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria. It is not to be confused with the Qazan Tatar language.
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[edit] 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, Finland, and the United States.
[edit] Dialects
Each of the three subethnic groups of the Crimean Tatars has its own dialect. The dialect of the Noğays - former inhabitants of the Crimean steppe (should not be confused with Nogai people) - is of Kypchak origin, Yalıboylus, who lived on the southern coast of Crimea before 1944, speak an Oghuz dialect very close to Turkish, and the middle dialect of the Tats from the Crimean Mountains (should not be confused with Tat people) is a mixture of the two. This dialect is a direct descendant of the Cuman language, 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.
[edit] 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. However, the official written languages of the Crimean Khanate were Chagatai and Ottoman Turkish. After the Islamization, Crimean Tatars wrote with a Persian-Arab script.
In 1876, the different Turkish Crimean dialects were made into a uniform written language by İsmail Gaspıralı. A preference was given to the Oghuz dialect of the Yalıboylus to break the link between the Crimeans and the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. In 1928, it was reoriented to the middle dialect.
In 1928, the alphabet was replaced with the Uniform Turkic Alphabet based on the Latin alphabet. The Uniform Turkic Alphabet was itself replaced in 1938 by a modified Cyrillic alphabet. 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 with two additional characters: Ñ ñ and Q q.
Crimean Tatar was the native language of the poet Bekir Çoban-zade.
[edit] Current situation
According to the constitution of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, as published in Russian by its Supreme Rada (see Конституция Автономной Республики Крым), Russian and Crimean Tatar languages enjoy a "protected" (Russian - обеспечивается ... защита) status; every citizen is entitled, at his request (Russian ходатайство), 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 (18 May 1944), it had an official language status in the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
[edit] Script
[edit] Crimean Tatar latin alphabet
| A a | B b | C c | Ç ç | D d | E e | F f | G g |
| Ğ ğ | H h | I ı | İ i | J j | K k | L l | M m |
| N n | Ñ ñ | O o | Ö ö | P p | Q q | R r | S s |
| Ş ş | T t | U u | Ü ü | V v | Y y | Z z |
 â symbol is not considered to be a separate letter.
[edit] Crimean Tatar cyrillic alphabet
| А а | Б б | В в | Г г | Гъ гъ | Д д | Е е | Ё ё |
| Ж ж | З з | И и | Й й | К к | Къ къ | Л л | М м |
| Н н | Нъ нъ | О о | П п | Р р | С с | Т т | У у |
| Ф ф | Х х | Ц ц | Ч ч | Дж дж | Ш ш | Щ щ | Ъ ъ |
| Ы ы | Ь ь | Э э | Ю ю | Я я |
гъ, къ, нъ and дж are separate letters.
[edit] Crimean Tatar in comparison with other languages
Because of its history, this language has often been counted as being descended from Kypchak Turkic. Actually, Crimean Tatar is similar to both Kypchak and Oghuz 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 Turkish, Urum of the Oghuz group, Kumyk, and Karachay-Balkar of the Kypchak group. Crimean Karaim and Krymchak languages are often cosidered to be variants of Crimean Tatar.
[edit] Crimean Tatar and Turkish
The following newspaper report compares the Crimean Tatar and Turkish languages:
| Crimean Tatar | Turkish |
|---|---|
| Meclis Haberleri 10.09.2003// Qırımtatar Milliy Meclisiniñ 120-cı toplaşuvı olıp keçti
2003 senesi 7 sentâbr künü Aqmescitteki İslâm Merkeziniñ binasında Qırımtatar Milliy Meclisiniñ 120-cı toplaşuvı olıp keçti. Toplaşuvda... |
Meclis Haberleri 10.09.2003// Kırım Tatar Millî Meclisi’nin 120. toplantısı gerçekleşti
7 Eylül 2003 günü Akmescit’teki İslâm Merkezi'nin binasında Kırım Tatar Millî Meclisi’nin 120. toplantısı gerçekleşti. Toplantıda... |
As can be seen these languages are quite similar.
[edit] Crimean Tatar and Tatar
Because of its common name, Crimean Tatar is sometimes mistaken to be a dialect of the Tatar language. Although these tongues are related (as both are Turkic), the Kypchak tongues closest to Crimean Tatar are (as was mentioned above) Kumyk and Karachay-Balkar, not the Tatar language.
[edit] External links
- Wiktionary's category of Crimean Tatar words
- Linguistic corpus of Crimean Tatar language
- Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People
- Kırımtatar Dili (Turkish)
- Wiktionary's category of Crimean Tatar words (Turkish)
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| Bolgar | Bolgar† | Chuvash | Hunnic*† | Khazar† | ||
| Uyghur | Old Turkic† | Aini²| Chagatay† | Ili Turki | Lop | Uyghur | Uzbek | ||
| Kypchak | Baraba | Bashkir | Crimean Tatar¹ | Cuman† | Karachay-Balkar | Karaim | Karakalpak | Kazakh | Kipchak† | Krymchak | Kumyk | Nogai | Tatar | Urum¹|Altay | Kyrgyz | ||
| Oghuz | Afshar | Azerbaijani | Crimean Tatar¹ | Gagauz | Khorasani Turkish | Ottoman Turkish† | Pecheneg† | Qashqai | Salar | Turkish | Turkmen | Urum¹ | ||
| Khalaj | Khalaj | ||
| Northeastern | Chulym | Dolgan | Fuyü Gïrgïs | Khakas | Northern Altay | Shor | Tofa | Tuvan | Western Yugur | Sakha / Yakut | ||
| Notes: ¹Listed in more than one group, ²Mixed language, *Disputed, †Extinct | |||
