Dr. Michał Németh of the Jagiellonian University explains how a peek inside someone’s closets can help stop a culture from disappearing and how altruism can facilitate the development of a niche branch of science.

O tym, jak zaglądanie ludziom do szaf może zapobiec znikaniu kultury, a bezinteresowna pomoc wspomagać rozwój nawet niszowej nauki, mówi dr Michał Németh z Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego.

This article is a supplement to Nemeth (2015), in which the absolute and relative chronology of the 18th and 19th century Karaim sound changes was presented with the aim of reconstructing how Middle Western Karaim evolved into its two well-known Modern Western Karaim dialects. Most of the conclusions formulated in Nemeth (2015) are further confirmed in the present article, while a few have been slightly modified.

The Hebrew Bible has long been translated into the Karaim language. Such translations are important for Karaim rituals and help to preserve the Karaim language, which has recently become endangered. Although the language of these translations shows some common features, the translations of different Karaim varieties show some differences, as well. Therefore, the present study analyses part of a translation of the Tanakh into Karaim that was published in Crimea in 1841. The language of the so-called Gozleve Bible is Crimean Karaim, an extinct Eastern variety of Karaim that belongs to the Kipchak (North-Western) group of the Turkic languages. As such, typical Kipchak features are expected to have been preserved in written Crimean Karaim sources. However, the language of this translation also shows Oghuzic characteristics. Thus, this study will demonstrate some specific linguistic characteristics of the Oghuz branch of Turkic as well as their distribution throughout the Book of Leviticus in the Gozleve Bible. Specifically, it will focus on the phonetical, morphological, and lexical features.