A student of Jewish languages reads Michał Németh’s Unknown Lutsk Karaim Letters in Hebrew Script (19th–20th Centuries). A Critical Edition

Abstract

The Karaite language has justifiedly attracted the attention of Turkologists though it should also be of interest to students of Jewish languages (= the languages of Rabbanite and Karaite Jews); and what students of Jewish languages have to say about it should interest Turkologists, just as what the latter have to say should interest the former.
 By looking at Karaite (as exemplified in Michał Németh’s Unknown Lutsk Karaim Letters in Hebrew Script (19th–20th Centuries): A Critical Edition)from the viewpoint of other Jewish languages, researchers can:
 
 Add new questions to the agenda of Karaite research. For example, the existence of an idiosyncratic type of periphrastic verb in at least Karaite, Judezmo, Yidish, and Ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazic English prompts the question of what the genetic relationships between the tokens of that type are.
 Reopens old questions. For example, the derivation proposed for Karaite כניסא '[Karaite (and/or Rabbanite?)] synagog', with phonological variants, according to which the word comes from Arabic. The author proposes a different etymology (possibly not original with him) , involving only Jewish languages (a more appropriate derivation for a Karaite word having that meaning), which takes the Karaite word back to Hebrew and/or to Jewish Aramaic.