LWM 458: Karay (Trakai Dialect)

Karay (Trakai Dialect)

Timur Kocaoğlu, Koç University
In collaboration with Mykolas Firkovicius

Karay (Karaim) is one of the endangered languages of the world. It belongs to the Kipchak branch of the Turkic languages. Today, only 20 persons can speak and write fluently in Karay out of ca. 2,500 people who are believed to preserve their ethnic identity in various countries (Lithuania, Poland, Crimea in Ukraine, Turkey, Israel, France, and the US). The present work is a handbook for the spoken Karay language of the Trakai dialect in Lithuania apart from the Halich and the Crimean dialects of Karay. The Karay phrases based on the spoken Karay were prepared in 1999 by the spiritual leader of the Lithuanian Karays, Mykolas Firkovicius who died in 2000, and were translated into English by Timur Kocaoğlu.

The grammar is consisted of an introduction to the Karay language followed by a grammatical description of the spoken Karay based on the Trakai dialect of Lithuania, 800 Karay phrases in both Lithuanian and Turkic Latin alphabets with their English translations, and the Karay-English word list with full grammatical index, plus bibliography.

ISBN 9783895864902. Languages of the World/Materials 458. 244pp. 2006.