| Urum | |
| Nativename: | Урум |
| Pronunciation: | in Tatar pronounced as /uˈrum/ |
| States: | Ukraine |
| Ethnicity: | Urums (Turkic-speaking Greeks) |
| Speakers: | 190,000 |
| Date: | 2000 |
| Ref: | e18 |
| Familycolor: | Altaic |
| Fam1: | Turkic |
| Fam2: | Common Turkic |
| Fam3: | Kipchak |
| Fam4: | West Kypchak |
| Dia1: | Tsalka |
| Dia2: | North Azovian |
| Script: | Cyrillic, Greek |
| Iso3: | uum |
| Glotto: | urum1249 |
| Glottorefname: | Urum |
| Map: | Lang Status 60-DE.svg |
| Notice: | IPA |
| Minority: |  Ukraine[1] |
Urum (Урум, Ουρούμ) is a Turkic language spoken by several thousand ethnic Greeks 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.[2] The Urum language is often considered a variant of Crimean Tatar.
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 pronounced as //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.[3] [4]
Urum is a Turkic language belonging to the West Kipchak branch of the family. Johanson (2021) classifies it as a variety of Crimean Tatar.[5]
| Front | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | unrounded | rounded | ||
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | ü /pronounced as /link// | ı /pronounced as /link// | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Close-mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Near-open | ä /pronounced as /link// | ö /pronounced as /link// | |||
| Open | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Plosive | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Affricate | (pronounced as /link/) | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||
| pronounced as /link/ | |||||||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /link/ | (pronounced as /link/) | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| pronounced as /link/ | (pronounced as /link/) | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Approximant | (pronounced as /link/) | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||
| Lateral | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||||
| pronounced as /link/ | |||||||||
| Flap | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||
/θ, ð/ appear solely in loanwords from Greek. /t͡s/ appears in loanwords. [w] can be an allophone of /v/ after vowels.[6] [7]
A few manuscripts are known to be written in Urum using Greek characters.[8] 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:[9]
| 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:[10]
| 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 |
Very little has been published on the Urum language. There exists a very small lexicon,[11] and a small description of the language.[12] For Caucasian Urum, there is a language documentation project that collected a dictionary,[13] a set of grammatically relevant clausal constructions,[14] and a text corpus.[15] The website of the project contains issues about language and history.[16]