Research Articles

Multiliteracy, past and present, in the Karaim communities

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Abstract

For endangered languages, the topic of orthography often arises because the language concerned has no existing or standardised writing system and the development of one is seen as a step towards creating a practice of literacy and creating a corpus of written texts. The case of the Karaim communities in Eastern Europe is different; in fact, it runs opposite to these trends. This paper traces the history of literacy in the Karaim communities of Eastern Europe, and how it influences today’s efforts towards language revitalisation. The 20th century saw massive cultural and political influences including reversing tides of occupation in World War 2 and, less than two generations later, and all within a decade, the de-Sovietisation and independence of their countries. Then followed entry to the European Union with new roles for minorities, a surge of interest in endangered languages, and the arrival of the new communication technologies– Internet and multimedia ... by observing how communities respond to such impacts, and how they react to the needs of language revitalisation caused by the rapid attrition of the last generation of speakers with full mastery of the speech, scripts, and scriptures, we can learn about how we linguists can assist them.

How to Cite:

Csató, É. & Nathan, D., (2007) “Multiliteracy, past and present, in the Karaim communities”, Language Documentation and Description 4, 207-230. doi: https://doi.org/10.25894/ldd269