ОРФОГРАФІЧНІ ОСОБЛИВОСТІ КРИМЧАЦЬКОГО РУКОПИСУ ДЖОНК ТА ПИСЕМНА ТРАДИЦІЯ КРИМЧАКІВ1

Abstract

The subject of the present publication is to bring to the light some orthographic features of the Yosyf Gabai’s Krymchak manuscript, called jonk, from Crimean Ethnographic Museum (Simferopol). Fragments of the manuscript were first transcribed, translated into Russian and published by David Rebi, who was a teacher of Krymchak and native speaker. However, the jonk has never been edited before. A special value of this manuscript lies in its language (or even languages), as well as styles represented. The manuscript is multilingual, contains folklore texts (poetry and narrative) of the Crimean and Turkish origin, written in Hebrew script, diary notes both in Krymchak and Russian, prayers and religion texts in Hebrew partially translated into Turkic written in the early XX century in Feodosia. This research is dedicated to Turkic linguistic features and their orthography. Despite of using Hebrew script Krymchak writing system developed in close relation to pre-reform Crimean Tatar writing tradition, both variants in their turn connected to Ottoman and pre-Ottoman orthographic traditions. Several orthographic features point to that, for instance principles of writing some vowels, consonants ( in initial, central, final positions), grammatical and word-formation suffixes (connected or separate writing), morphonological change, ways of transcription and adopting loanwords. Language of Yosyf Gabai’s jonk reflects orthographic and colloquial features of Krymchak and shares them with other Crimean Turkic manuscripts of this period. Schematically marked suffixes, together with some archaic morphonological changes, graphically reflected in the text, such as disrupted vowel harmony, alternations in labial harmony, syncope, epenthesis, protheses, disrupted consonant change between morphemes characterize orthography of the Krymchak manuscript.