Lituania

[Andre Cramblit]

Lithuania/Ukraine: Karaims Struggle To Maintain Their Language And
Culture

http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2003/07/22072003165742.asp

  By Charles Carlson

 Karaim is an endangered Turkic language spoken only by an estimated 50
speakers mostly living in Lithuania. RFE/RL traces the ethnogenesis of
the Karaims and highlights present-day efforts to maintain their
language and culture.

Prague, 22 July 2003 (RFE/RL) -- Karaims are the descendants of Kypchak
tribes who lived in the tribal union of the Khazar empire in the Crimea
between the eighth and 10th centuries. In the eighth century, the
Karaims converted to a form of Judaism known as Karaism, which may be
described as a return to the roots or "sola scriptura."

The Karaims later split into three main groups. One group remained in
the Crimea; another moved to Galicia, in part of present-day Ukraine;
and the third group -- the largest -- in the 14th century left for what
is now the town of Trakai in present-day Lithuania.

 By the end of the 17th century there were about 30 Karaim communities
in eastern Central Europe. But just 100 years later, their numbers had
been drastically reduced as a result of epidemics and wars.
Nevertheless, they were given status as a religious community by the
respective countries in which they found themselves.

According to a 1992 study by Lithuania's National Research Center, the
country's Karaims are considered a national minority and "original
inhabitants" of Lithuania.

The sect of Karaism to which the Karaims have belonged since the eighth
century is known as Anan ben David, a form of Judaism that acknowledges
the Old Testament, but rejects the Talmud. According to Karaim
religious teaching, reading the Bible is the duty of each believer.
This religion is distinct from Rabbinical Judaism. The Karaim house of
worship is called a kenesa. Today there are two functioning kenesas in
Lithuania, one in Vilnius and one in Trakai.

 In the 19th century, Karaim intellectuals became aware of the need to
develop a literary language and publish periodicals in Karaim. The
vocabulary of the Karaim language is strongly influenced by folklore,
proverbs, riddles, and folk poetry, but lacks many abstract terms and
has not expanded to incorporate words to express many scientific,
technical, and philosophical concepts.

Until the 20th century, Karaim literacy was based on a knowledge of
Hebrew. At first, Hebrew characters were used for writing Karaim, but
later the orthographic system was based on the writing systems of the
countries in which Karaims lived. After Lithuania gained independence
in 1990, Karaims adopted an orthography based on the Lithuanian writing
system. The most comprehensive grammar of Karaim is by the well-known
Turkologist Kenesbay Musaev.

Estimates place the number of Karaim speakers today at around 50.  This
includes about 45 speakers of the language in Lithuania and only five
speakers in the small settlement of Halych in Ukraine. This has led to
Karaim being classified as a "seriously endangered" language in the
UNESCO Red Book on Endangered Languages. The maintenance of their
mother tongue and the revitalization of community life are the most
urgent tasks facing the Karaims today.

Several projects today are aimed at maintaining conversational Karaim.
One such project, designed to document the spoken language, has been
carried out by Professor Eva Csato Johansson, a specialist of Karaim at
Sweden's Uppsala University. She launched a program in 1994 to document
the language by means of voice and video recordings.

 Working with other linguists, she also produced a multimedia CD which
has been in use by the community in order to support the revitalization
of the language in Lithuania, and help linguists who want to learn
about this language.

 Csato praised the local Ukrainian authorities in the town of Halych,
home to the five remaining elderly speakers of the Halych dialect of
Karaim, for their efforts to publicize and preserve the Karaim language
and culture. "Now in spite of the fact that the Halych community
consists of only five old speakers, this is a very, very powerful
little community. In 2002, in September, they could organize an
international conference on Halych Karaim history and culture which
evoked very great interest," Csato said.

 This, Csato said, was partly due to the support the Karaim community
received from Halych authorities, which has provided financial aid as
well as help in maintaining Halych traditions.

The Karaim community in Lithuania, too, receives support from the state
for the development of its culture. The Lithuanian Karaim Cultural
Society, under the leadership of Karaim musicologist Karina
Firkaviciute, seeks to promote Karaim cultural traditions through
courses and programs especially designed for the approximately
250-member Karaim community in Vilnius and Trakai. Karina is one of the
very few young native speakers of the endangered Karaim language.

 Firkaviciute told RFE/RL that a great deal is being done to help
preserve Karaim culture. "As the Cultural Society of Lithuanian
Karaims, we are trying to maintain the language, and the most important
thing is to be able to give the children the possibility to learn the
language. So we are trying to organize each summer a kind of summer
camp for Karaim children, where they can get some time to learn the
Karaim language. But of course they would need to do it more often and
during the whole year, not only in the summertime," she said.

She also praised the work of Eva Csato Johansson, especially the CD-ROM
she compiled for people who would like to learn the Karaim language.
"[It] includes also some dictionary, and grammar and sounds, and you
would 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 it
is not yet published, and you would not be able to buy it. But we
expect it every second to come, so there would be already the
scientific background for the future lessons, and also we are trying to
document the language in the sense of printing the books, printing the
poems or literature or some articles on the Karaim language, on
something that has been written in Karaim language, etc.," Firkaviciute
said.

 Firkaviciute said the various Karaim communities maintain contacts with
each other and meet practically every year. RFE/RL asked her if she was
optimistic the language would survive. "I would say, 'yes,' and if
somebody is not, I would say we should actually be optimistic, because
otherwise you are not able to do anything," she said. "And of course
the only pessimistic note that could be here is that the [size] of the
communities is very small, but it is not the main thing which could
make you pessimistic. If you are pessimistic, then you are not a human
being. You should be optimistic, and I think we are optimistic, and we
will try to do something to make other people more optimistic. But it's
the main thing just to stay with those positive moods, because
otherwise there's no way to run."

 As an example of her language, Karina read a Karaim poem entitled "Syru
Trochnun": "Being faraway our brothers always remember our native
lands. Elders and the young, everybody from distant places always come
back to Trakai. There everybody enjoys the nature, summertime on the
islands. Youth will not come back, so we have to remember and being
faraway not to forget about Trakai. What is the secret of Trakai, why
does everybody long for that small town? You have to tell that secret
even for the youngest -- Youth go there because of young nice girls and
we all go and long for Trakai because of tradition."

 Some are convinced languages like Karaim, which have only a few
speakers, are doomed to extinction. But Professor David Crystal, an
internationally recognized linguist and supporter of endangered
languages, believes that a language can survive regardless of the
number 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 speakers
it has. There are cases on record of peoples with just a few hundred
speakers who have, with appropriate support, managed to maintain their
language presence and to build upon it," Crystal said. This should be
encouragement to the small community of Karaims in Trakai.