The Karaim language (Crimean dialect: къарай тили, Trakai dialect: karaj tili, Turkish dialect: karay dili ,traditional Karaim name lashon kedar (Hebrew: לשון קדר - «language of the nomads») is a Turkic language with Hebrew influences, in a similar manner to Yiddish or Ladino. It is spoken by ca. 1,130 Karaims (also known as Qarays) in Lithuania, Poland and 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 leaving there from XIV century . There is a chance the language will survive in Trakai as a result of official support as well as its appeal to tourists of the castle,while Karaim presented as the castle ancient defenders.
Read more about Karaim Language: Morphology, Syntax, Writing System
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Strange goings on! Jones did it slowly, deliberately, in the bathroom, with a knife, at midnight. What he did was butter a piece of toast. We are too familiar with the language of action to notice at first an anomaly: the ‘it’ of ‘Jones did it slowly, deliberately,...’ seems to refer to some entity, presumably an action, that is then characterized in a number of ways.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)