PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Urum people identify themselves as Turkish-speaking Pontic Greeks who left Anatolia at the beginning of the 19th century. A major group emigrated to the highlands of K’vemo K’art’li, where they still live today. They conserved the variety of Turkish that their ancestors were speaking in the time before emigration, enriched by influences from the languages in their new environment, in particular from Russian. The Urum language displays substantial similarities with the Turkish dialects of Anatolia; beyond these similarities, it displays some unique developments (e.g., in vowel harmony) as well as properties that are traced back to influences from Russian (e.g., in the use of subordinate clauses).