Karaïm

The Karaim language (Crimean dialect: къарай тили, qaray tili, לשון קדר; Trakai dialect: karaj tili), also known by its Hebrew name Lashon Kedar (Hebrew: , “language of the nomads") is a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak group, with Hebrew influences, similarly to Yiddish or Judaeo-Spanish. It is 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 (also known as Troki) 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 (Napora, 2018). The origin of the Karaims living in Crimea is subject to much dispute and inconsistency. Difficulty in reconstructing their history stems from the scarcity of documents pertaining to this population. Most of the known history is gathered from correspondence between the populations of Karaims and other populations in the 17th to 19th centuries (Akhiezer 2003). Furthermore, a large number of documents pertaining to the Crimean population of Karaims were burned during the 1736 Russian invasion of the Tatar Khanate's capital, Bakhchisarai (Akhiezer 2003). Some scholars say that Karaims in Crimea are descendants of Karaite merchants who migrated to Crimea from the Byzantine Empire (Schur 1995). In one particular incidence, migration of Karaites from Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) to Crimea is documented following a fire in the Jewish quarter in 1203 (Tsoffar 2006). After the Turco-Mongol invasions, settlement of merchants in Crimea may have been encouraged in the 13th and 14th centuries by the active trade routes from Crimea to China and Central Asia (Schur 1995).