Shirt a Phobia

Sample Page

Urum (Урум, Ουρούμ) is a Turkic language spoken by several thousand Urums, an ethnic Greek population 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.

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 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

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

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

* – wasn’t marked as a separate phonem from the phonem /e/.[7]

Examples

  • šar/še(e)r[7] – city[8]
  • äl/el[7] – hand
  • göl – lake
  • yel – wind
  • yol – road
  • it – dog
  • üzüg – ring
  • ğız/hız[7] – girl
  • ğuš – bird

Consonants

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.[8][9]

Grammar

The Urum language, like other Turkic languages, is agglutinative. This means that many different affixes are used in word formation in the Urum language.

Nouns

Nouns in Urum language have two numbers: singular; (bala ‘child‘) and plural -lAr; (ballar ‘children‘). There are 7 cases:

  • Nominative: M’en büyük çöl’e s’evnıyım — I admire the vast steppe.
  • Genitive: Oların el’leri — Their hands.
  • Accusative: S’en almanı aşaysın/yeyisin. — You are eating an apple.
  • Dative (allative): M’en ev‘e varayım. — I am going home.
  • Locative: M’en Mariupol’da otruydum. — I lived in Mariupol.
  • Ablative: Bız d’el’iyik skol’adan. — We are going from the school.
  • Instrumental: Sınız l’est’ernen kartop çıharıysınız. — You dig potatoes with a shovel.
Case Ending
Nominative −Ø
Genitive −(n)Yn
Accusative −(n)Y
Dative (Allative) −(y)A
Locative −DA
Ablative −DAn
Instrumental −nAn

Verbs

Declination of verbs in Urum language are not very different from declination of verbs in Crimean Tatar language:

singular plural
1st −Ym −YK
2nd −sYn −sYnYz
3rd −Ø −lAr

Examples:

  • M’en büyük çöl’e s’evnıyım.
  • Gül’eyik bız toptan.
  • Neye sız b’ekleysin.
  • Sız Urumcas laf eteysiniz.

Due to the small number of sources, only 3 tenses were identified (most likely, in the Urum language there were and are as many tenses as there are in the Crimean Tatar language).

Tenses Positive Negative
Presens −(A)y− −mAy−
Past −dI− −mAdI−
Future −cA− −?−

Writing system

A few manuscripts are known to be written in Urum using Greek characters.[10] 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:[7]

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

In 2025, people from the organization North Azovian Greeks (Urums and Roumeans) created a new Urum alphabet based on the Latin alphabet in Kyiv.

A a B b C c Ç ç D d E e F f G g
Ğ ğ H h I ı İ i J j K k L l M m
N n O o Ö ö P p R r S s Ş ş T t
U u Ü ü V v Y y Z z ‘

Publications

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

  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. Archived from the original on 2017-02-11. 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 c d e Гаркавець, Олександр (2000). Урумський словник (pdf) (in Ukrainian and Urum). p. 632.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  8. ^ a b Stavros, Skopeteas (2016). “The Caucasian Urums and the Urum language/Kafkasya Urumları ve Urum Dili”. Handbook of Endangered Turkic Languages.
  9. ^ Podolsky, Baruch (1986). Notes on the Urum language. Harrassowitz Verlag. pp. 99–112.
  10. ^ “Urum”. Language Museum. Archived from the original on July 5, 2015.
  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. Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2011-07-20.{{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.
  • 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.