Native to Crimea, Israel, Turkey Native speakers 200 (2007) ISO 639-3 jct | Ethnicity 1,800 Krymchaks (2007) Recognised minority
language in Ukraine | |
Language family Turkic
Common Turkic
Kipchak
Kipchak–Cuman
Krymchak | ||
The Krymchak language (кърымчах тыльы, Qrımçah tılyı) is a moribund Turkic language spoken in Crimea by the Krymchak people. It is often considered to be a Crimean Tatar dialect. The language is sometimes called 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, 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.
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.