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Karaim - What does it mean?

Definition of 'Karaim'

English

Proper noun

(en-proper noun)
  • A Kipchak Turkic language, with Aramaic and Persian influences, spoken in Lithuania, Poland, the Crimea and the Ukraine.
  • * 1981 , Bernard Comrie, The Languages of the Soviet Union , page 2:
  • At times the discrepancy can be even greater: only 12.8% of the Karaim, a Turkic-speaking group living for the most part in Lithuania, declared Karaim as their native language.
  • * 2001 , Éva Ágnes Csató, Syntactic code-copying in Karaim'', in ''The Circum-Baltic Languages: Typology and Contact (edited by Östen Dahl, Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm), volume 1 (ISBN 9027230579), page 271:
  • For more than six hundred years, Karaim has been spoken as a community language in what is today Lithuania.

    Noun

    (Karaims)
  • A member of a Turkic ethnic group which traditionally spoke this language.
  • * 1970 , Alan W. Fisher, The Russian Annexation of the Crimea 1772-1783 (ISBN 0521076811), page 120:
  • He began to develop closer relations with his Karaim' subjects and issued a charter to a '''Karaim''' named Iosif to try again to establish a mint. The ' Karaim Rabbi wrote that after the Christians had left,
  • * 1998 , Lars Johanson, The Turkic Languages (ISBN 0415082005), page 8:
  • The term Karaim refers to both a people and to a religious system. Karaims are believers in the Old Testament but consider themselves to be of Turkic ethnic origin. They have traditionally used the Hebrew alphabet for writing their language,
  • (rare) .
  • * 1981 , Bernard Comrie, The Languages of the Soviet Union , pages 2, 47 and 49:
  • At times the discrepancy can be even greater: only 12.8% of the Karaim , a Turkic-speaking group living for the most part in Lithuania, declared Karaim as their native language.
    The Karaim are being rapidly assimilated, ethnically and especially linguistically, to the surrounding Russian population.
  • * 2004 , Jonathan Bousfield, Baltic States (ISBN 1858288401), page 102:
  • The Karaim
    A Turkic-speaking group practising a branch of Judaism, the Karaim are thought to be descended from the Khazars, a central Asian people who held sway over a steppe empire stretching between the Black and Caspian seas
  • (rare) A Karaite .
  • * 1882 January 9, Wickham Hoffman, in a letter to Mr. Frelinghuysen, published in the Index to the Executive Documents of the House of Representatives for the Second Session of the Forty-Seventh Congress, 1882-'83 , page 44:
  • He added that he was not "one of those Talmud Jews"; that he belonged to the American Reformed Church, known in Russia as the Karaim' Jews.

    See also

    * Karaimism

    Similar to 'Karaim'

    Karim, Kareem