Tsalka Greeks
Tsalka ( ka, წალკა, tr , , or , ) is a town and municipality center in southern Georgia's Kvemo Kartli region.
Population
The district had a population of 2,326. According to the 2014 census, 47% of its population is Georgian, 38% A ...
who mainly inhabit the
Tsalka
Tsalka ( ka, წალკა, tr , , or , ) is a town and municipality center in southern Georgia (country), Georgia's Kvemo Kartli region.
Population
The district had a population of 2,326. According to the 2014 census, 47% of its population ...
and
Tetritsqaro
Tetritskaro or Tetritsqaro ( ka, თეთრიწყარო, tr; , ) is a town in Kvemo Kartli in southern Georgia. It is the municipal center of Tetritsqaro Municipality. According to 2014 Georgian Census its population is 3,093. The Baku-Tbi ...
municipalities in
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States
Georgia may also refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Georgia (name), a list of pe ...
.
Sociolinguistic status
Not all Tsalka Greeks speak Tsalka; there are many
Pontic Greek
Pontic Greek (, ; or ''Romeika'') is a variety of Modern Greek indigenous to the Pontus region on the southern shores of the Black Sea, northeastern Anatolia, and the Eastern Turkish and Caucasus region. An endangered Greek language variety ...
speakers. Tsalka is exclusively a spoken language and has no writing system.
The name Tsalka language is not used by its speakers; instead, they use descriptive terms like "bizim dili" ("our language"). Tsalka Greeks also call their language Musulmandzha (the Muslim language) and often identify as
Urums
Urums (, ; , ''Urúm''; Turkish and Crimean Tatar: ''Urum,'' ) are several groups of Turkic-speaking Greek Orthodox people native to Crimea. The emergence and development of the Urum identity took place from 13th to the 17th centuries. Bringin ...
as a result of the belief that people's ethnic identity is defined by the genetic relationships of their language; this view was heavily promoted by the Soviet bureaucracy. At the same time, they are offended by the claim that they are not real Greeks because of the Turkish influence. According to Garkavets, Orthodox Mariupol Urums who also speak a Turkish dialect have no similar insecurity in relation to their language.
Speaking Tsalka is not prestigious and is seen as shameful or a curse, but the speakers believe that switching from Greek to Tsalka has enabled them to preserve their Orthodox Christian faith; they see it in contrast with the conversion of
Pontic Greeks
The Pontic Greeks (; or ; , , ), also Pontian Greeks or simply Pontians, are an ethnically Greek group indigenous to the region of Pontus, in northeastern Anatolia (modern-day Turkey). They share a common Pontic Greek culture that is di ...
into Islam while maintaining their Hellenic language. The actual reason for the abandonment of language is unknown, and is not typical for ethnic minorities in
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...
(see the opposite cases in Bosnia, Herzsegovina, Albania and Greece); it is being theorised that the
language shift
Language shift, also known as language transfer, language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are perceived ...
occurred in the urban population while more rural Pontic Greeks retained a Hellenic dialect.
Tsalka became less stigmatised after
dissolution of the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Declaration No. 142-Н of ...
in 1991 as its partial intelligibility had facilitated trading with Turkey. The common language also helps Tsalka Greeks to befriend Turkic speakers from neighbouring settlements and provides them with entertainment via Turkish popular media. Most Tsalka Greeks report a desire to learn the Greek language.
History
Most ancestors of Tsalka Greeks moved to the East of modern Georgia from the
Erzurum Province
Erzurum Province () is a province and metropolitan municipality in the Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. Its area is 25,006 km2, and its population is 749,754 (2022). The capital of the province is the city of Erzurum. It is the fourth lar ...
. Most Tsalka surnames are formed using a pattern that reflects the history of resettlement: Tsalka speakers add a Turkish suffix (usually ''-gil'') to the name of the male head of the family at the time of migration to the Caucasus. Other last names have a Russian suffix (''-ov'' or ''-ev'').
The biggest wave of Pontic Greek migration to Georgia occurred in 1830. Greeks had cooperated with the Russian army that entered Ottoman territories in 1828, and were afraid of Turkish retaliation after the signing of the Treaty of Adrianople, which returned territories with significant Greek population to the Ottoman Empire. Over 42,000 Greeks living in
Akhaltsikhe Municipality
Akhaltsikhe ( ka, ახალციხის მუნიციპალიტეტი, ''Akhaltsikhis munitsip’alit’et’i'')) is a municipality in Georgia's southern region of Samtskhe-Javakheti. Covering an area of . As of 2021 it had a ...
,
Kars
Kars ( or ; ; ) is a city in northeast Turkey. It is the seat of Kars Province and Kars District. ...
Erzurum
Erzurum (; ) is a List of cities in Turkey, city in eastern Anatolia, Turkey. It is the largest city and capital of Erzurum Province and is 1,900 meters (6,233 feet) above sea level. Erzurum had a population of 367,250 in 2010. It is the site of an ...
municipalities left the territory of modern Turkey, which constitutes at least 1/5 of the total population of the time. Tsalka Greeks moved to Georgia in 1830: from
Gümüşhane
Gümüşhane () is a city in the Black Sea Region of Turkey. It is the seat of Gümüşhane Province and Gümüşhane District.Maden in May, from Başköy village in Erzurum vilayet in July; the third, biggest group arrived from various sancak of Erzurum vilayet over the course of the second half of the same year. By the end of 1831, the Greek population of Tsalka settled in 18 villages with a total population of 642 families. Most of them spoke Pontic Greek at home, but the subsequent generations switched to Turkish as it was the local
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...
. This is also reflected in the
toponym
Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of ''wikt:toponym, toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage, and types. ''Toponym'' is the general term for ...
s: many Greek villages in Tsalka have Greek names, but their residents do not speak Greek.
In 1979, Tsalka Greeks composed a third of all the Greek population of Georgia. In later decades, many of them moved to
Crimea
Crimea ( ) is a peninsula in Eastern Europe, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost entirely surrounded by the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast in mainland Ukrain ...
,
Stavropol
Stavropol (, ), known as Voroshilovsk from 1935 until 1943, is a city and the administrative centre of Stavropol Krai, in southern Russia. As of the 2021 Census, its population was 547,820, making it one of Russia's fastest growing cities.
E ...
and
Krasnodar
Krasnodar, formerly Yekaterinodar (until 1920), is the largest city and the administrative centre of Krasnodar Krai, Russia. The city stands on the Kuban River in southern Russia, with a population of 1,154,885 residents, and up to 1.263 millio ...
Krais.
Typology and dialects
Typologically, Tsalka language is an Anatolian dialect of Turkish.
Tsalka has two main dialectal groups: "gro" and "pasena"; both have changed the Turkish morphosyntactic paradigm by replacing the threefold past tense system with only one form with the "gro" idioms preferring the /-mɨş/ suffix (denoting aorist in standard Tuskish) and "pasena" using the /-di/ suffix (witnessed past in Turkish). There are reports that claim that the Kars dialects retain the original system of past tenses.
Phonology
The sound system of the Tsalka language is largely similar to the one of other Eastern Anatolian dialects:
There is a tendency of forgoing the Turkish
vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is a phonological rule in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – must share certain distinctive features (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning tha ...
by
vowel backness
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
; as a result, the paired Turkish
suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...
es such as the
plural
In many languages, a plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated as pl., pl, , or ), is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than ...
marker ''-lar/ler'' have been replaced by a single suffix (''-lar'') used in all environments.
The quality of the /i/ vowel has shifted towards /ɨ/ under the influence of the
Modern Greek
Modern Greek (, or , ), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the language sometimes referred to ...
language.
Modern Greek has other impact on Tsalka too: the latter copied the palatalisation of /k/ and /g/ before front vowels into /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/.
Prosodic
In linguistics, prosody () is the study of elements of speech, including intonation (linguistics), intonation, stress (linguistics), stress, Rhythm (linguistics), rhythm and loudness, that occur simultaneously with individual phonetic segments: v ...
features of Tsalka language such as intonation show influence of the Pontic Greek dialect.
Lexicon
Tsalka language contains a significant amount of Modern Greek loanwords, with a big part of them pertaining to Christianity, such as ''kilise'' ("church") from , or education (''melani'', "ink", from ). At the same time, many Turkish words exist even in the religious sphere: ''namaz'' ("prayer"). Many of the Greek loanwords into Tsalka closely match the same words in the
Urum language
Urum (, ) is a Turkic language spoken by several thousand ethnic Greeks who inhabit a few villages in southeastern Ukraine. Over the past few generations, there has been a deviation from teaching children Urum to the more common languages of th ...
, the Turkish dialects of Krasnodar Krai Greeks and the
Gagauz language
Gagauz (; or ) is a Turkic language spoken by the Gagauz people of Moldova, Ukraine, Russia and Turkey and it is an official language of the Autonomous Region of Gagauzia in Moldova. Gagauz belongs to the Oghuz branch of Turkic languages, ...
; wrote that this unity arose because they were borrowed from the literary tradition of the
Karamanlides
The Karamanlides (; ), also known as Karamanli Greeks: "Turkophone Greeks are called Karamanli Greeks or Karamanlides, and their language and literature is called Karamanli Turkish or Karamanlidika, but the scholarly literature has no equivalent ...
, Turkish-speaking Greeks who assimilated into the Greek nation in 20 century.