Krymchak is the Crimean Tatar language dialect spoken by the Krymchaks - Rabbanite Jews of the Crimea. Another name for the language is Judæo-Tartar or Judæo-Crimean-Tatar.
Like most Jewish languages, it is written using Hebrew characters, and contains large numbers of Hebrew loanwords. In Soviet Union at the 1930s this language was written in a variant of Latin alphabet - Uniform Turkic Alphabet (as Crimean Tatar language and Karaim language), later it was written in Cyrillic.
The community was decimated during the Holocaust. The majority of its speakers now resides in Israel; a few thousand remain in the Ukraine and Russia.
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Last updated: 10-19-2005 08:47:31
