Krymchak language

Krymchak (кърымчах тыльы, Qrımçah tılyı; also called Judeo-Crimean Tatar, Krimchak, Chagatai, Dzhagatay) is a moribund Turkic language spoken in Crimea by the Krymchak people. The Krymchak community was composed of Jewish immigrants who arrived from all over Europe and Asia and who continuously added to the Krymchak population. The Krymchak language, as well as culture and daily life, was similar to Crimean Tatar, the peninsula's majority population, with the addition of a significant Hebrew influence. Like most Jewish languages, it contains many 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. Over the last century the language has disappeared and been replaced by Russian, with approximately 70% of the population perishing in the Holocaust.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, fewer than 785 Krymchak people remain in Crimea. One estimate supposes that of the approximately 1500-2000 Krymchaks living worldwide, mostly in Israel, Crimea, Russia and the United States, only 5-7 are native speakers. Krymchak is within the Turkic language family. It has alternatively been considered as a separate language or as an ethnolect of Coastal/Middle Crimean Tatar, along with Crimean Karaite. Glottochronological reckoning evidenced that these subdialects became distinct from Crimean Tatar around 600-800 AD. Krymchak and Karaite became distinguishable around 1200–1300. The Krymchak community formed over hundreds of years as Jews from all over Europe and Asia immigrated to the Crimean peninsula. A Greek-speaking Jewish community had resided on the peninsula from 100 BC, and other Jewish peoples settled there over time as well.