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.

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.