Urum language
Urum | |
---|---|
Урум | |
Pronunciation | [uˈrum] |
Native to | Ukraine, Georgia, Russia |
Ethnicity | Urums (Turkic-speaking Greeks) |
Native speakers | 190,000 (2000)[1] |
Turkic
| |
Dialects |
|
Cyrillic, Greek | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | uum |
Glottolog | urum1249 |
ELP | Urum |
Urum is a Turkic language spoken by several thousand ethnic Greeks who inhabit a few villages in Georgia and Southeastern Ukraine. Over the past few generations, there has been a deviation from teaching children Urum to the more common languages of the region, leaving a fairly limited number of new speakers.[2] The Urum language is often considered a variant of Crimean Tatar.
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 prosthetic. Turkic languages originally did not have /ɾ/ in the word-initial position and so in borrowed words, it 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.[3][4]
Classification[]
Urum is a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak branch of the family. According to Glottolog Urum is a West Kipchak language and forms a subfamily with the (Crimean Tatar and Krymchak).[5]
Phonology[]
Vowels[]
Front | Back | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
unrounded | rounded | unrounded | rounded | |
Close | i | ü /y/ | ı /ɯ/ | u |
Close-mid | e | o | ||
Near-open | ä /æ/ | ö /œ/ | ||
Open | a |
Examples[]
- šar - city[6]
- äl - hand
- göl - lake
- yel - wind
- yol - road
- it - dog
- üzüg - ring
- ğız - girl
- ğuš - bird
Consonants[]
Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||||
Plosive | voiceless | p | t | c ⟨k⟩ | k | |||
voiced | b | d | ɟ ⟨g⟩ | g | ||||
Affricate | voiceless | (ts) | tʃ ⟨č⟩ | |||||
voiced | dʒ ⟨ǰ⟩ | |||||||
Fricative | voiceless | f | (θ) | s | ʃ ⟨š⟩ | x ⟨h⟩ | h | |
voiced | v | (ð) | z | ʒ ⟨ž⟩ | ɣ ⟨ğ⟩ | |||
Approximant | l | j | ||||||
Flap | ɾ |
/θ, ð/ appear solely in loanwords from Greek. /t͡s/ appears in loanwords.[6]
Writing system[]
A few manuscripts are known to be written in Urum using Greek characters.[7] 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. Alexander Garkavets uses the following alphabet:[8]
А а | Б б | В в | Г г | Ғ ғ | Д д | (Δ δ) | Д′ д′ |
(Ђ ђ) | Е е | Ж ж | Җ җ | З з | И и | Й й | К к |
Л л | М м | Н н | Ң ң | О о | Ӧ ӧ | П п | Р р |
С с | Т т | Т′ т′ | (Ћ ћ) | У у | Ӱ ӱ | Υ υ | Ф ф |
Х х | Һ һ | Ц ц | Ч ч | Ш ш | Щ щ | Ъ ъ | Ы ы |
Ь ь | Э э | Ю ю | Я я | Ѳ ѳ |
In an Urum primer issued in Kyiv in 2008 the following alphabet is suggested: [9]
А а | Б б | В в | Г г | Ґ ґ | Д д | Д' д' | Дж дж |
Е е | З з | И и | Й й | К к | Л л | М м | Н н |
О о | Ӧ ӧ | П п | Р р | С с | Т т | Т' т' | У у |
Ӱ ӱ | Ф ф | Х х | Ч ч | Ш ш | Ы ы | Э э |
Publications[]
Very little has been published on the Urum language. There exists a very small lexicon,[10] and a small description of the language.[11] For Caucasian Urum, there is a language documentation project that collected a dictionary,[12] a set of grammatically relevant clausal constructions,[13] and a text corpus.[14] The website of the project contains issues about language and history.[15]
References[]
- ^ Urum at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ "Did you know Urum is endangered?". Endangered Languages. Retrieved 2017-02-10.
- ^ Казаков, Алексей (December 2000). Понтийские греки (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2008-01-27.
- ^ Gordon, Raymond G., ed. (2005). "Ethnologue Report for Urum". Ethnologue: Languages of the World. SIL International.
- ^ "Glottolog 4.3 - Urum". glottolog.org. Retrieved 2021-05-03.
- ^ a b Stavros, Skopeteas (2016). "The Caucasian Urums and the Urum language/Kafkasya Urumları ve Urum Dili". Handbook of Endangered Turkic Languages.
- ^ "Urum". Language Museum. Archived from the original on July 5, 2015.
- ^ Гаркавець, Олександр (2000). Урумський словник (pdf) (in Ukrainian and Urum). p. 632.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) - ^ Смолина, Мария (2008). Урумский ��зык. Урум дили (приазовский вариант). Учебное пособие для начинающих с аудиоприложением (in Russian and Urum). p. 168. ISBN 978-966-8535-15-4.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) - ^ Podolsky, Baruch (1985). A Tatar - English Glossary. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN 3-447-00299-9.
- ^ Podolsky, Baruch (1986). "Notes on the Urum Language". Mediterranean Language Review. 2: 99–112.
- ^ Skopeteas; Moisidi; Sella-Mazi; Yordanoglu (2010). "Urum basic lexicon. Ms" (PDF). University of Bielefeld. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-04-26.
- ^ Verhoeven; Moisidi; Yordanoglu (2010). "Urum basic grammatical structures. Ms" (PDF). University of Bremen. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-04-26.
- ^ Skopeteas; Moisidi (2010). "Urum text collection. Ms". University of Bielefeld. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-09-19.
- ^ "Urum documentation project". Archived from the original on 2012-04-26.
- Agglutinative languages
- Kipchak languages
- Pontic Greeks
- Languages of Ukraine
- Pontic Greek culture