Phonetics and transcription

Introductory remarks

The set of sounds and phonemes used in south-western Karaim has been debated in a number of articles, monographs, and grammatical descriptions, see: Grzegorzewski (1903; 1916–1918), Zajączkowski, A. (1931), Pritsak (1959a), Musaev (1964; 1977), Dubiński (1978), Berta (1998) and Mireev/Abragamovič (2008: 11–14). Recently, we have ventured to compare these works in Németh (2011) and to point out all of the relatively large number of differences between them. We attempted to prove that a variety of phonetic differences (concerning, above all, the combinatory variants of several sounds), which came to light after comparing the above-mentioned studies, is to be assigned, on the one hand, to idiolectal differences characteristic of the linguistic informants cooperating with Grzegorzewski, Zajączkowski, Kowalski and Dubiński, and, on the other, to different Ukrainian dialectal influences exerted on the Karaim of Lutsk and Halych. The fact that the recorded materials are diverse cannot be surprising, since the informants were of different ages and origins, the researches were conducted at different times and different places (Halych and Lutsk). Additionally, even though different Ukrainian dialectal features lead to different realizations of certain segments in Lutsk and Halych, these discrepancies have so far been neglected by grammarians, who have treated south-western Karaim almost in all cases as one undivided idiom.

Further problems occur, owing to the different transcriptions applied in the above-mentioned works, or as a result of transcription systems not reflecting all the phonetic peculiarities of southern Karaim (e.g. the transcription based on the Polish orthography).

Another difficulty we have to confront is the fact that the description of some of the sounds are too brief (as in Zajączkowski, A. 1931) while others, in contrast, incomprehensibly knotty (as in Grzegorzewski 1903 and 1916–1918) or unreliable (as in some places in Musaev 1964 and 1977). The importance of understanding these discrepancies is great especially if we want to present our linguistic materials using a transcription reflecting the phonetic peculiarities of the language. We all know that reflecting the real pronunciation of the 19th-century Karaim used in Lutsk with one hundred percent accuracy is impossible, but this must, nevertheless, be attempted.

Thus, we can say that a number of features of the south-western Karaim phonetic system characteristic of the idiolects reflected in our letters must remain to some degree speculative – within certain bounds, of course.