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Urum is a Turkic language spoken by several thousand people who inhabit a few villages in the Southeastern Ukraine and in diaspora communities worldwide. The Urum language is often considered a variant of the Crimean Tatar language.
The name Urum is derived from Rûm ("Rome"), the term for the Byzantine empire in the Muslim world. The Ottoman Empire used it to describe non-Muslims within the empire. The initial vowel in Urum is prosthetic: originally Turkic languages did not have ‹r› in the word-initial position, and in borrowed words used to add a vowel before it. The common use of the term Urum appears to have led to some confusion, as most Turkish-speaking Greeks were called Urum. The Turkish-speaking population in Georgia is often confused with the distinct community in Ukraine. (see: Urums)
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