The Contributions to the Loanwords in Karaim

Abstract

The Turkic language has adopted hundreds of thousands of Turkish words into its vocabulary throughout history, with the methods of word derivation in its systematics. It is a reality that in the formation of a rich vocabulary of Turkish, in addition to Turkish words, words adopted from foreign languages with which it interacts in various fields such as religious, socio-cultural and literary also have an important place. Karaim, which is among the dialects of the Northwest group of the Turkic language, has also adopted words to its vocabulary by borrowing from languages such as Hebrew, Slavic, Arabic and Persian as a result of some relations. Karaim periodicals such as Karay Awazy, Onarmach, Halic, Sahyszymyz, Luwachlar, Przyjaciel Karaima ve Mysl Karaimska published in the second quarter of the 20th century, not only kept the Karaim written language alive in that period but also present important information about the vocabulary of Karaim‟s Trakai and Halic dialects. In this study, Karaim periodicals, which were created with the special efforts of pioneers such as Mardkowicz and Tınfovic in the second quarter of the 20th century, are searched and the loanwords determined from these publications is classified according to their origins and thus, it is aimed to contribute to the studies in this field.