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Urum language

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Urum (Урум, Ουρούμ) is a Turkic language spoken by several thousand ethnic Greeks who inhabit a few villages in 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.[3] The Urum language is often considered a variant of Crimean Tatar.

Urum
Урум
Urum written in the Cyrillic script, along with the obsolete Latin and Greek scripts
Pronunciation[uˈrum]
Native toUkraine
EthnicityUrums (Turkic-speaking Greeks)
Native speakers
190,000 (2000)[1]
Dialects
  • Tsalka
  • North Azovian
Cyrillic, Greek
Official status
Recognised minority
language in
Language codes
ISO 639-3uum
Glottologurum1249
ELPUrum
Urum is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (2010)
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Name and etymology

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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 /ɾ/ 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.[4][5]

Classification

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Urum is a Turkic language belonging to the West Kipchak branch of the family. Johanson (2021) classifies it as a variety of Crimean Tatar.[6]

Phonology

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Vowels

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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

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  • šar - city[7]
  • äl - hand
  • göl - lake
  • yel - wind
  • yol - road
  • it - dog
  • üzüg - ring
  • ğız - girl
  • ğuš - bird

Consonants

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Labial Dental Alveolar Postalveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m n ɲ ⟨nʼ⟩ ŋ
Plosive voiceless p t c ⟨tʼ⟩ k
voiced b d ɟ ⟨dʼ⟩ 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 (w) j
Lateral plain l
velarized ɫ
Flap ɾ ɾʲ ⟨rʼ⟩

/θ, ð/ appear solely in loanwords from Greek. /t͡s/ appears in loanwords. [w] can be an allophone of /v/ after vowels.[7][8]

Writing system

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A few manuscripts are known to be written in Urum using Greek characters.[9] 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:[10]

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 Θ θ

In an Urum primer issued in Kyiv in 2008, the following alphabet is suggested: [11]

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

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Very little has been published on the Urum language. There exists a very small lexicon,[12] and a small description of the language.[13] For Caucasian Urum, there is a language documentation project that collected a dictionary,[14] a set of grammatically relevant clausal constructions,[15] and a text corpus.[16] The website of the project contains issues about language and history.[17]

References

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  1. ^ Urum at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ "Про затвердження переліку мов національних меншин (спільнот) та корінних народів України, яким загрожує зникнення". Official webportal of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. 7 June 2024.
  3. ^ "Did you know Urum is endangered?". Endangered Languages. Retrieved 2017-02-10.
  4. ^ Казаков, Алексей (December 2000). Понтийские греки (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2008-01-27.
  5. ^ Gordon, Raymond G., ed. (2005). "Ethnologue Report for Urum". Ethnologue: Languages of the World. SIL International.
  6. ^ Johanson, Lars (2021). Turkic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 63.
  7. ^ a b Stavros, Skopeteas (2016). "The Caucasian Urums and the Urum language/Kafkasya Urumları ve Urum Dili". Handbook of Endangered Turkic Languages.
  8. ^ Podolsky, Baruch (1986). Notes on the Urum language. Harrassowitz Verlag. pp. 99–112.
  9. ^ "Urum". Language Museum. Archived from the original on July 5, 2015.
  10. ^ Гаркавець, Олександр (2000). Урумський словник (pdf) (in Ukrainian and Urum). p. 632.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  11. ^ Смолина, Мария (2008). Урумский язык. Урум дили (приазовский вариант). Учебное пособие для начинающих с аудиоприложением (in Russian and Urum). Odzhakʺ. p. 168. ISBN 978-966-8535-15-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  12. ^ Podolsky, Baruch (1985). A Tatar - English Glossary. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN 3-447-00299-9.
  13. ^ Podolsky, Baruch (1986). "Notes on the Urum Language". Mediterranean Language Review. 2: 99–112.
  14. ^ Skopeteas; Moisidi; Sella-Mazi; Yordanoglu (2010). "Urum basic lexicon. Ms" (PDF). University of Bielefeld. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-04-26.
  15. ^ Verhoeven; Moisidi; Yordanoglu (2010). "Urum basic grammatical structures. Ms" (PDF). University of Bremen. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-04-26.
  16. ^ Skopeteas; Moisidi (2010). "Urum text collection. Ms". University of Bielefeld. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-09-19.
  17. ^ "Urum documentation project". Archived from the original on 2012-04-26.
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  • Urum DoReCo corpus compiled by Stavros Skopeteas, Violeta Moisidi, Nutsa Tsetereli, Johanna Lorenz and Stefanie Schröter. Audio recordings of narrative texts with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level, translations, and time-aligned morphological annotations.
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