Urum language

Name and etymology

The name Urum is derived from Rûm 'Rome', the term for the Byzantine Empire in the Muslim world. The Ottoman Empire used it to describe non-Muslims within the empire. The initial vowel in Urum is prothetic. Turkic languages originally did not have in word-initial position, and so in borrowed words they used to add a vowel before it. The common use of the term Urum appears to have led to some confusion, as most Turkish-speaking Greeks were called Urum. The Turkish-speaking population in Georgia is often confused with the distinct community in Ukraine.{{cite web |editor-last = Gordon |editor-first = Raymond G.

Classification

Urum is a Turkic language belonging to the West Kipchak branch of the family. Johanson (2021) classifies it as a variety of Crimean Tatar.

Phonology

Vowels

• • wasn't marked as a separate phonem from the phonem /e/.

Examples

• uum/še(e)r - city
• uum/el - hand
• uum - lake
• uum - wind
• uum - road
• uum - dog
• uum - ring
• uum/hız - girl
• uum - bird

Consonants

/θ, ð/ appear solely in loanwords from Greek. /t͡s/ appears in loanwords. [w] can be an allophone of /v/ after vowels.

Writing system

A few manuscripts are known to be written in Urum using Greek characters. During the period between 1927 and 1937, the Urum language was written in reformed Latin characters, the New Turkic Alphabet, and used in local schools; at least one primer is known to have been printed. In 1937, the use of written Urum stopped. In 2000, Alexander Garkavets uses the following alphabet:

In an Urum primer issued in Kyiv in 2008, the following alphabet is suggested:

Publications

Very little has been published on the Urum language. There exists a very small lexicon,{{cite book For Caucasian Urum, there is a language documentation project that collected a dictionary, a set of grammatically relevant clausal constructions, and a text corpus. The website of the project contains issues about language and history.

References

References

1. (7 June 2024). "Про затвердження переліку мов національних меншин (спільнот) та корінних народів України, яким загрожує зникнення".
2. "Did you know Urum is endangered?".
3. link. Казаков. Алексей. (December 2000)
4. Johanson, Lars. (2021). "Turkic". Cambridge University Press.
5. Stavros, Skopeteas. (2016). "The Caucasian Urums and the Urum language/Kafkasya Urumları ve Urum Dili". Handbook of Endangered Turkic Languages.
6. Podolsky, Baruch. (1986). "Notes on the Urum language". Harrassowitz Verlag.
7. "Urum". Language Museum.
8. Гаркавець. Олександр. link. (2000)
9. Смолина. Мария. link. (2008). Odzhakʺ
10. Skopeteas. (2010). "Urum basic lexicon. Ms.". University of Bielefeld.
11. Verhoeven. (2010). "Urum basic grammatical structures. Ms.". University of Bremen.
12. Skopeteas. (2010). "Urum text collection. Ms.". University of Bielefeld.
13. "Urum documentation project".