Krymchak
Description by Isaac Mayer
From the 11th to the 20th century, Krymchak was the Turkish language spoken by the Rabbinate Jewish community of the Crimean Peninsula. The language was known within the community as Tatar Tili or Čagaday, historically as Čaltay or Turqi, and by outsiders and scholars as Qırımčaq, Judeo-Rabbinic Turkic, or Rabbinic Judeo-Crimean Tatar. While in much of the world the Jewish community is predominantly Rabbinate Jews (Jews who accept the legitimacy of the Mishnah and Talmud), the community of Crimea is deeply divided between Rabbinate and Karaite Jews, with Rabbinic Jews often being the minority.
The Rabbinic community in Crimea dates back to the 11th century or so, founded by Byzantine Jews fleeing the crusades, and expanding greatly in the 15th and 16th centuries with Sephardic influx. The age of Krymchak as a distinct language, though, is under some dispute. What is certain is that the term “Krymchak” dates to no earlier than the nineteenth century, after the Russian conquest of Crimea, and was first used to distinguish the Crimean Rabbinate community from its Ashkenazi neighbors.
The majority of written Krymchak texts fall into a few categories: some older liturgical texts (like this Haggadah published in 1904) and religious poetry, and family journals known as jönk or džönk, which held a miscellaneous selection of texts, stories, and personal accounts, and would be passed down from father to eldest son. Some researchers have been able to document recipes in Krymchak as well.
Early written texts in Krymchak are quite similar to local Crimean Tatar dialects with regard to their usage of Arabic and Persian lemmas and their general phonology, but they are distinguished through Hebrew syntactic and lexical influence. Later texts include much heavier Russian-language influence. Hebrew loanwords are almost exclusively in the religious sphere, and generally follow Turkic declension norms. Examples include names of holidays such as psax (Pessah/Passover), prim (Purim), and ska (Sukkot). Uniquely to Krymchak, these assimilated forms sometimes preserve Hebrew final letters when written down, and treat the suffixes as separate postpositions — for instance, the Hebrew word חֲכָמִים “sages” is translated as חָכָם לָר haham lar.
Names of language:
Endonyms: Tatar Tili, Čaltay
Exonyms: Krymchak, Qırımčaq, Rabbinic Judeo-Crimean Tatar, Judeo-Rabbinic Turkic
Historical Names: Čagaday/Chagatai, Turqi
Territories where it was/is spoken:
Crimean Peninsula
15th century: centered in Kaffa (now Feodosia, Crimea)
18th century: in Qarasubazar (now Bilohirsk, Crimea)
1920s: Simferopol
Estimated # speakers:
- 1940: 8,000
- 2025: 0
Vitality today:
Moribund
Writing systems:
Hebrew (originally),
Cyrillic script (later)
Literature:
prayer books, poetry, jönk (family journals), recipes
Quick Facts
Song in Krymchak
Krymchak educator David Rebi reading a handwritten džönk in Simferopol (source)
Written Krymchak often used a Hebrew writing system, largely based on Byzantine practice with some Ashkenazi influence. The sound /t/ was marked almost exclusively by the letter ט, even in words of Hebrew origin spelled with a ת. In both Turkic and Hebrew words, the letter צ was exclusively pronounced /t͡ʃ/ (so “Krymchak” was קרימצאק). The letter ק could stand for /q/, /k/, or /x/, and the sound /f/ (only found in borrowed words) was not distinguished from /p/. The sounds /γ/, /ʤ/, and /ŋ/ were all generally written as a גׄ with a mark above, with different individual scribes using different practices. The Cyrillic orthography developed by Rebi and Ačkinazi in the 1990s largely uses the same orthography as Russian, but with six additional letters: гь /γ/, къ /q/, нъ /ŋ/, ö /ø/, ÿ /y/, and чъ /ʤ/, and without the letters ё, ю, я, or ъ.
Following is a brief text example, from a Krymchak adaptation of the Targum Song of Songs, chosen for its distinctly Rabbinate content. Notice the use of Turkish declension and pluralization on nouns of Hebrew origin, a rare feature among Jewish languages.
Translation: And its six orders of Mishnah with the girsa of the Gemara
During the Holocaust, Krymchaks suffered the fates of many other Jews, resulting in the near-destruction of the Krymchak language. In the community, December 11 is observed as a holiday called tqun, honoring the memories of the thousands of Krymchaks killed in the Holocaust. The term comes from the Hebrew תיקון (tikkun, 'mending' or 'creating order'), and the holiday is one of few preserved by later generations of Krymchaks, most of whom have entirely assimilated into surrounding cultures. Tqun is likewise one of the few words Krymchaks have passed down to younger generations. Today there are several small communities of Krymchaks in Russia, Ukraine, and Israel, though there are reportedly no fluent speakers of the language left. Other texts that remain in Krymchak include folktales, called masal, and poetry, especially commemorating the losses of the Holocaust.
Portion of a Holocaust memorial poem written by Zaxar Konfino in 1977 (Polinksy 1991):
"In 1944, in the Crimea, the fascist rascals shot down innocent people and went happily home. Did they realize whom they shot laughing?"
In 1989, a communal organization known as "Kyrymchakhlar," the Cultural and Educational Society of Krymchaks in the Crimean Republic, was founded in Simferopol. It has published a substantial amount on the popular science, literature, and heritage of the Krymchak people. Most of its work is only accessible in Ukrainian or Russian, and since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 their state funding was removed and local information has slowed to a halt. Even so, regardless of the political troubles in the region, the existence of the Kyrymchakhlar society shows that there are still Krymchaks passionate about preserving their unique cultural and linguistic heritage. You can read more about the Kyrymchakhlar society here. You can visit an online archive of their website here. and a more current Krymchak site here.
Krymchak translation of Shir HaShirim (Shapira 2021)
Fragment of a poem by Moshe b. Eliyahu HaLevi, from 17th-century Kaffa (Shapira 2021)
Listen to samples of Krymchak Folk songs
To cite: Mayer, Isaac. n.d. Krymchak. Jewish Language Website, Sarah Bunin Benor (ed.). Los Angeles: Jewish Language Project. https://www.jewishlanguages.org/krymchak. Attribution: Creative Commons Share-Alike 4.0 International.