Karaims

[Vadim]

 I would like to invite all the list members understanding Russian language to visit our website http://turkolog.narod.ru and read a lot of articles on Crimean Karaims. Various books regarding Karaims' life in Crimea (there are presently 671 Karaim men and women living at the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine) written by active members of the local community are available for purchase from the website as well. Dr Vadim MireyevSimferopol, UKRAINEFrom: Andre Cramblit [mailto: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG]To: ENDANGERED-LANGUAGES-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORGDate: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 12:58:18 -0700Subject: LituaniaLithuania/Ukraine: Karaims Struggle To Maintain Their Language AndCulturehttp://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2003/07/22072003165742.aspBy Charles CarlsonKaraim is an endangered Turkic language spoken only by an estimated 50speakers mostly living in Lithuania. RFE/RL traces the ethnogenesis ofthe Karaims and highlights present-day efforts to maintain theirlanguage and culture.Prague, 22 July
  2003 (RFE/RL) -- Karaims are the descendants of Kypchaktribes who lived in the tribal union of the Khazar empire in the Crimeabetween the eighth and 10th centuries. In the eighth century, theKaraims converted to a form of Judaism known as Karaism, which may bedescribed as a return to the roots or "sola scriptura."The Karaims later split into three main groups. One group remained inthe Crimea; another moved to Galicia, in part of present-day Ukraine;and the third group -- the largest -- in the 14th century left for whatis now the town of Trakai in present-day Lithuania.By the end of the 17th century there were about 30 Karaim communitiesin eastern Central Europe. But just 100 years later, their numbers hadbeen drastically reduced as a result of epidemics and wars.Nevertheless, they were given status as a religious community by therespective countries in which they found themselves.According to a 1992 study by Lithuania's National Research Center, thecountry's Karaims are con
 sidered a national minority and "originalinhabitants" of Lithuania.The sect of Karaism to which the Karaims have belonged since the eighthcentury is known as Anan ben David, a form of Judaism that acknowledgesthe Old Testament, but rejects the Talmud. According to Karaimreligious teaching, reading the Bible is the duty of each believer.This religion is distinct from Rabbinical Judaism. The Karaim house ofworship is called a kenesa. Today there are two functioning kenesas inLithuania, one in Vilnius and one in Trakai.In the 19th century, Karaim intellectuals became aware of the need todevelop a literary language and publish periodicals in Karaim. Thevocabulary of the Karaim language is strongly influenced by folklore,proverbs, riddles, and folk poetry, but lacks many abstract terms andhas not expanded to incorporate words to express many scientific,technical, and philosophical concepts.Until the 20th century, Karaim literacy was based on a knowledge ofHebrew. At first, Hebrew
  characters were used for writing Karaim, butlater the orthographic system was based on the writing systems of thecountries in which Karaims lived. After Lithuania gained independencein 1990, Karaims adopted an orthography based on the Lithuanian writingsystem. The most comprehensive grammar of Karaim is by the well-knownTurkologist Kenesbay Musaev.Estimates place the number of Karaim speakers today at around 50. Thisincludes about 45 speakers of the language in Lithuania and only fivespeakers in the small settlement of Halych in Ukraine. This has led toKaraim being classified as a "seriously endangered" language in theUNESCO Red Book on Endangered Languages. The maintenance of theirmother tongue and the revitalization of community life are the mosturgent tasks facing the Karaims today.Several projects today are aimed at maintaining conversational Karaim.One such project, designed to document the spoken language, has beencarried out by Professor Eva Csato Johansson, a specia
 list of Karaim atSweden's Uppsala University. She launched a program in 1994 to documentthe language by means of voice and video recordings.Working with other linguists, she also produced a multimedia CD whichhas been in use by the community in order to support the revitalizationof the language in Lithuania, and help linguists who want to learnabout this language.Csato praised the local Ukrainian authorities in the town of Halych,home to the five remaining elderly speakers of the Halych dialect ofKaraim, for their efforts to publicize and preserve the Karaim languageand culture. "Now in spite of the fact that the Halych communityconsists of only five old speakers, this is a very, very powerfullittle community. In 2002, in September, they could organize aninternational conference on Halych Karaim history and culture whichevoked very great interest," Csato said.This, Csato said, was partly due to the support the Karaim communityreceived from Halych authorities, which has provi
 ded financial aid aswell as help in maintaining Halych traditions.The Karaim community in Lithuania, too, receives support from the statefor the development of its culture. The Lithuanian Karaim CulturalSociety, under the leadership of Karaim musicologist KarinaFirkaviciute, seeks to promote Karaim cultural traditions throughcourses and programs especially designed for the approximately250-member Karaim community in Vilnius and Trakai. Karina is one of thevery few young native speakers of the endangered Karaim language.Firkaviciute told RFE/RL that a great deal is being done to helppreserve Karaim culture. "As the Cultural Society of LithuanianKaraims, we are trying to maintain the language, and the most importantthing is to be able to give the children the possibility to learn thelanguage. So we are trying to organize each summer a kind of summercamp for Karaim children, where they can get some time to learn theKaraim language. But of course they would need to do it more of
 ten andduring the whole year, not only in the summertime," she said.She also praised the work of Eva Csato Johansson, especially the CD-ROMshe compiled for people who would like to learn the Karaim language."[It] includes also some dictionary, and grammar and sounds, and youwould be able to learn how to read and how to pronounce it correctly,so it is quite a live thing. It is a very fresh and nice thing, but itis not yet published, and you would not be able to buy it. But weexpect it every second to come, so there would be already thescientific background for the future lessons, and also we are trying todocument the language in the sense of printing the books, printing thepoems or literature or some articles on the Karaim language, onsomething that has been written in Karaim language, etc.," Firkaviciutesaid.Firkaviciute said the various Karaim communities maintain contacts witheach other and meet practically every year. RFE/RL asked her if she wasoptimistic the language wou
 ld survive. "I would say, 'yes,' and ifsomebody is not, I would say we should actually be optimistic, becauseotherwise you are not able to do anything," she said. "And of coursethe only pessimistic note that could be here is that the [size] of thecommunities is very small, but it is not the main thing which couldmake you pessimistic. If you are pessimistic, then you are not a humanbeing. You should be optimistic, and I think we are optimistic, and wewill try to do something to make other people more optimistic. But it'sthe main thing just to stay with those positive moods, becauseotherwise there's no way to run."As an example of her language, Karina read a Karaim poem entitled "SyruTrochnun": "Being faraway our brothers always remember our nativelands. Elders and the young, everybody from distant places always comeback to Trakai. There everybody enjoys the nature, summertime on theislands. Youth will not come back, so we have to remember and beingfaraway not to forget about
 Trakai. What is the secret of Trakai, whydoes everybody long for that small town? You have to tell that secreteven for the youngest -- Youth go there because of young nice girls andwe all go and long for Trakai because of tradition."Some are convinced languages like Karaim, which have only a fewspeakers, are doomed to extinction. But Professor David Crystal, aninternationally recognized linguist and supporter of endangeredlanguages, believes that a language can survive regardless of thenumber of speakers -- as long as there is support for the language."It is possible for a language to survive, to regenerate -- to'revitalize' is the usual term -- regardless of the number of speakersit has. There are cases on record of peoples with just a few hundredspeakers who have, with appropriate support, managed to maintain theirlanguage presence and to build upon it," Crystal said. This should beencouragement to the small community of Karaims in Trakai.

_______________________________________________
Express Yourself - Share Your Mood in Emails!
Visit www.SmileyCentral.com - the happiest place on the Web.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/endangered-languages-l/attachments/20030724/19452ab9/attachment.htm>