Armeno-Kipchak language


Armeno-Kipchak was a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak branch of the family that was spoken in Crimea during the 14–15th centuries. The language has been documented from the literary monuments of 16–17th centuries written in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Armenian script. Armeno-Kipchak resembles the language of Codex Cumanicus, which was compiled in the 13th century.
Speakers of the Armeno-Kipchak are considered to be linguistically assimilated Armenians. Armeno-Kipchak-speakers generally identified as Armenian.

History

Armenians began settling in Crimea in the 11th century and underwent linguistic assimilation in the 14th and 15th centuries.
From Crimea, mainly the city of Feodosia, they resettled to parts of modern-day Ukraine, Poland, Romania, and Moldova. Written monuments from Armenian Apostolic Church centres located in these regions are the reason the Armeno-Kipchak language is known.
In these monuments, the language refers to itself in three ways: with the older term хыпчах тили, the possessive construction бизим тил, and the later comparative terminological combination татарча, which became widespread thanks to translators familiar with Crimean Tatar.

Linguistic Features

Armeno-Kipchak has 9 vowels: а, ӓ, е, ы, и, о, ӧ, у, ӱ.
It contained many loanwords from Ukrainian, Polish and Latin, especially in translated texts, as well as Iranian and Arabic influences.
The grammatical system was greatly affected by in the influence of Slavonic languages.

Literature

The monuments were written in the period 1521 to 1669 in Armenian script. They consist of tens of thousands of pages. In total there are 112 surviving monuments. These include: