Writing

History of writing in Armeno-Kipchak

The sources identified as Middle Kipchak or Kipchak are of heterogenic origin, and are written in various writing systems: Latin, Arabic, Armenian and others (Berta 2006: 158Berta 2006: 158 / komentarz/comment/r /
Berta, Árpád 2006. "Middle Kipchak", w: Lars Johnson & Éva Á. Csató (red.) The Turkic Languages. London – New York: Routledge.

) Armeno-Kipchak was written down in the Armenian script.
The written relics of Armeno-Kipchak date back mainly to the 16th and 17th centuries. They are mainly all sorts of legal documents: court documents, marriage contracts, last wills etc. The Statute of Polish Armenians from 1528 should also be mentioned. Besides that, the Polish Chronicle was written down in Armeno-Kipchak in the first half of the 16th century, as well as other historical positions and fiction (Stachowski 2010: 214Stachowski 2010: 214 / komentarz/comment/r /
Stachowski, Stanisław 2010. "Polonizacja języka ormiańsko-kipczackiego", LingVaria 2: 213-227.

).
Religious texts were a separate category of Armeno-Kipchak writing. They included psalters, and an Old Armenian prayer book from 1618, whose title (in the transcription in the Latin alphabet) Aghotk hasarakac “Common prayers” remained in the Armenian Liturgy language (Old Armenian), while the subtitle and the content were written in the “Armenian script in the Kipchak language” (Pisowicz 2009: 11Pisowicz 2009: 11 / komentarz/comment/r /
Pisowicz, Andrzej 2009. "Czy polscy Ormianie mówili po tatarsku?", Życie Tatarskie 98-100: 10-12.

).
Finally, there are lexical positions in Armeno-Kipchak, like an Armeno-Kipchak dictionary created on the basis of three manuscripts from the Vienna collection [the 17th century], published in 1968-1972, edited by Edward Tryjarski. The entries in Old Armenians from the manuscripts were explained in Armeno-Kipchak, and the dictionary, which is a contemporary compilation of the manuscripts, contains entries in Armeno-Kipchak, translated to Polish and French.
In present days, compilations of old legal Armenian documents are being published, e.g. the records of Armenian Gmina in Kamieniec Podolski from 1559-1576, edited by Timofiej Ivanowicz Grunin, published in 1967.
In 2008, the diaries of Martin Gruneweg, a German from Danzig who worked in the end of the 16th century for an Armenian merchant and speaker of Kipchak, were published in Germany. The author of the diaries describes the language which was used in the merchant’s house as “Tatar, and a general language of Armenians from Lvov” (Pisowicz 2009: 12Pisowicz 2009: 12 / komentarz/comment/r /
Pisowicz, Andrzej 2009. "Czy polscy Ormianie mówili po tatarsku?", Życie Tatarskie 98-100: 10-12.

).
There are several ways to transcribe Armeno-Kipchak in the publications released nowadays; they are suggested by Tryjarski, Garkawiec-Hurszudian and Chirla. Edward Tryjarski, the author of the majority of studies of Armeno-Kipchak sources in Polish, uses a system of writing combining transcription with transliteration. The author is aware of the fact that it is not a perfect method, but it is justified by the tradition and, to a certain extent, by practical matters (Tryjarski 2010: 18Tryjarski 2010: 18 / komentarz/comment/r /
Tryjarski, Edward 2010. Zapisy sądu duchownego Ormian miasta Lwowa za lata 1625-1630 w języku ormiańsko-kipczackim. Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności.

).