The history of Parra
This page is mostly a social history of Parra and the people who have spoken it. For a history of the grammar and sound changes, see the top of the Grammar page. For a history of IB's Crimea in general, see the History of Crimea.
Parra began to develop when Venetian and, later, Genoese merchants brought Mediterranean Lingua Franca to their trade colonies. Forms of Lingua Franca emerged wherever Romance speakers traded in the Muslim world; the Black Sea variety had some distinctive features but was from the same tradition as those in the Mediterranean.
For 270 years, Italians ruled most of the Crimean coast. Lingua Franca came to occupy an important niche in Crimea's already very complex society. In the mountainous south of the peninsula, site of most of the cities and diversity, LF could be heard in most large markets. By the late 1400s it was slowly spreading northward across the border with the Tatar Khanate. By now you can probably call the language Parra, and it was becoming the main language of wider communication among Crimea's many language groups.
Crimea's coast was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1475. Turkish domination severed Parra from mainstream Lingua Franca and led to major changes in its sounds and lexicon. During this time the language expanded its use into the world of officialdom, as Ottoman and Tatar officials began to use it while speaking with local community leaders. One of the earliest extant Parra texts, written in Greek script, is a letter from a Greek bishop of Theodoro (Doros) to a minister of the Khan.
Parra has a long history in writing; the old Lingua Franca had seen itself written down in inventories, contracts, short poems and incantations, and the like. Parra continued to be written for these purposes, plus letters and official edicts that might be posted around a city. The script was not standard in those days: different writers might choose Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, or Armenian script depending on their skills and audience.
Russia annexed Crimea in 1783. Its officials expected to communicate in Russian, and Russia built a new chief port, Sebastópol, and filled it with Russian settlers. This removed Parra from two key contexts, official correspondence and the waterfront. But by now Parra was so deeply ingrained as Crimea's common language that the Russian takeover could change it, but not kill it. Outside Sebastópol, Parra continued to be the main language for conducting business and interacting with outsiders to one's own culture. The Crimean War raised its profile in the West as many British, French, and Italian soldiers had to learn it in order to talk with the locals.
Around 1900 the spectre of revolution began to haunt Crimea. The different factions and movements - liberal, Menshevik, Bolshevik - seldom worked well together, but when they did collaborate, they used Parra. Some Communists liked Parra for its "proletarian" and "international" character and believed it should be actively promoted. The first book ever printed in Parra was Manifest de Comunistic Parti (The Communist Manifesto), intended to be read aloud to mixed groups of supporters. That this was even possible shows how far the language had grown beyond a mere trade pidgin.
A Tatar-dominated liberal faction seized power in 1917 and formed a democratic government with clearly Turkic elements (it called its legislature the Qurultai). The Communist party, dominated by Ashkenazi and Russians, took over the following year and declared a Soviet People's Republic that was more cosmopolitan in outlook. They declared Parra an official language of the country and sponsored a linguistic survey to standardize it. This work was finished in 1934. In the Second Great War, Crimea was invaded repeatedly: by Ukraine in 1940, Germany in 1944, Russia in 1947. Each time, Parra helped the occupiers communicate with the locals.
However, the Russian occupation turned out to be different. Russia's ultra-nationalist leaders, the SNOR, initially favored Crimea's Russians to the exclusion of other groups. They demonstrated this preference by creating a flag in the Slavic colors and by moving the capital from polyglot Acmescit to Rusophone Sebastópol. But a transparently pro-Russian policy could never succeed in Crimea, and before long the SNORists switched to the tactic of dividing and ruling, playing the different ethnic groups against one another. Either way, the SNORists had no use for Parra. They discouraged its use in public discourse and in writing.
The fall of SNOR opened Crimea up again, and Parra could once again openly be the main langauge of wider communication between the different mother tongues. One sign of this was the Jimni de Cirima (Hymn of Crimea), the new national anthem, the official version of which is in Parra. Another sign was the growing use of Parra on road signs and product labels. Today it can be heard and seen in many contexts all over the country.
For 270 years, Italians ruled most of the Crimean coast. Lingua Franca came to occupy an important niche in Crimea's already very complex society. In the mountainous south of the peninsula, site of most of the cities and diversity, LF could be heard in most large markets. By the late 1400s it was slowly spreading northward across the border with the Tatar Khanate. By now you can probably call the language Parra, and it was becoming the main language of wider communication among Crimea's many language groups.
Crimea's coast was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1475. Turkish domination severed Parra from mainstream Lingua Franca and led to major changes in its sounds and lexicon. During this time the language expanded its use into the world of officialdom, as Ottoman and Tatar officials began to use it while speaking with local community leaders. One of the earliest extant Parra texts, written in Greek script, is a letter from a Greek bishop of Theodoro (Doros) to a minister of the Khan.
Parra has a long history in writing; the old Lingua Franca had seen itself written down in inventories, contracts, short poems and incantations, and the like. Parra continued to be written for these purposes, plus letters and official edicts that might be posted around a city. The script was not standard in those days: different writers might choose Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, or Armenian script depending on their skills and audience.
Russia annexed Crimea in 1783. Its officials expected to communicate in Russian, and Russia built a new chief port, Sebastópol, and filled it with Russian settlers. This removed Parra from two key contexts, official correspondence and the waterfront. But by now Parra was so deeply ingrained as Crimea's common language that the Russian takeover could change it, but not kill it. Outside Sebastópol, Parra continued to be the main language for conducting business and interacting with outsiders to one's own culture. The Crimean War raised its profile in the West as many British, French, and Italian soldiers had to learn it in order to talk with the locals.
Around 1900 the spectre of revolution began to haunt Crimea. The different factions and movements - liberal, Menshevik, Bolshevik - seldom worked well together, but when they did collaborate, they used Parra. Some Communists liked Parra for its "proletarian" and "international" character and believed it should be actively promoted. The first book ever printed in Parra was Manifest de Comunistic Parti (The Communist Manifesto), intended to be read aloud to mixed groups of supporters. That this was even possible shows how far the language had grown beyond a mere trade pidgin.
A Tatar-dominated liberal faction seized power in 1917 and formed a democratic government with clearly Turkic elements (it called its legislature the Qurultai). The Communist party, dominated by Ashkenazi and Russians, took over the following year and declared a Soviet People's Republic that was more cosmopolitan in outlook. They declared Parra an official language of the country and sponsored a linguistic survey to standardize it. This work was finished in 1934. In the Second Great War, Crimea was invaded repeatedly: by Ukraine in 1940, Germany in 1944, Russia in 1947. Each time, Parra helped the occupiers communicate with the locals.
However, the Russian occupation turned out to be different. Russia's ultra-nationalist leaders, the SNOR, initially favored Crimea's Russians to the exclusion of other groups. They demonstrated this preference by creating a flag in the Slavic colors and by moving the capital from polyglot Acmescit to Rusophone Sebastópol. But a transparently pro-Russian policy could never succeed in Crimea, and before long the SNORists switched to the tactic of dividing and ruling, playing the different ethnic groups against one another. Either way, the SNORists had no use for Parra. They discouraged its use in public discourse and in writing.
The fall of SNOR opened Crimea up again, and Parra could once again openly be the main langauge of wider communication between the different mother tongues. One sign of this was the Jimni de Cirima (Hymn of Crimea), the new national anthem, the official version of which is in Parra. Another sign was the growing use of Parra on road signs and product labels. Today it can be heard and seen in many contexts all over the country.
Parra outside Crimea
Parra, or Parra words, have spread beyond the borders of Crimea at various times. In IB, Lingua Franca is still extant among sailors in the Mediterranean and Europe's Atlantic seaboard; in the Black Sea this language tradition merges with Parra. What distinguishes Parra from "Pontic Lingua Franca" is the richness of Parra's vocabulary and its use by all levels of society, not just sailors. Parra, in essentially the same form as spoken in Crimea, can be heard in some ports in Ukraine and Russia, in particular Cherson in Ukraine (not to be confused with the ancient Crimean city of the same name).
In the mid-19th century, soldiers from several countries found themselves in Crimea for the war. I want to share this remarkable real-life exchange between Russian and British sentries in the Sevastopol siege lines, recorded by an English officer. This all took place *here*, but echoes of Lingua Franca (Parra?) can be heard:
"They made signs that they wanted a light for their pipes, and then they stayed a few minutes talking to our sentries, or rather trying to do so:
1st Russian soldier: "Englise bono!"
1st English soldier: "Russke bono!"
2nd Russian soldier: "Francis bono!"
2nd English soldier: "Bono!"
3rd Russian soldier: "Oslem no bono!"
3rd English soldier: "Ah, ah! Turk no bono!"
1st Russian soldier: "Oslem!" making a face, and spitting on the ground to show his contempt.
1st English soldier: "Turk!" pretending to run away, as if frightened, upon which all the party go into roars of lafter, and after shaking hands, they return to their respective beats."
*There*, soldiers on all sides quickly picked up a pidginy sort of Parra from all the shopkeepers, spies, and other locals with whom they had to interact. The British, French, and Russian forces used it with each other in exchanges similar to the one recorded above.
Parra words entered the soldier slang of all three armies, and some of these words were brought back home and entered more general usage. Some can still be heard today. Here are a few that entered English and/or Scots, still sometimes heard in parts of Britain or America:
Barker (England) or Backer (NAL) (<baca, to look) - A street vendor, especially an especially insistent one. From the cry of vendors, "Baca! Baca!"
Bibi - (<bibi, to drink) a drink.
Cusey (<cusa, girl) - in 19th-century soldier slang, "prostitute;" now weakened to "woman of questionable morals."
Vitchey (<viçí) Awake, alert, paying attention
Almost a century later, in the Second Great War, many Soviet partisans fled Crimea in the wake of the German invasion. They first settled in various cities in the Italian peninsula, from which they organized the storied Free Crimean Soviet Army, which fought alongside the Allies in Italy and Austria. After the war the émigré community relocated to Munich, which as the capital of a moderate soviet republic was very sympathetic to the Crimeans. In the Munich neighborhoods where the Crimeans settled, Parra assumed a lively existence for a generation, but later, while the people maintained their Crimean home languages, they switched to German to communicate among themselves.
In the mid-19th century, soldiers from several countries found themselves in Crimea for the war. I want to share this remarkable real-life exchange between Russian and British sentries in the Sevastopol siege lines, recorded by an English officer. This all took place *here*, but echoes of Lingua Franca (Parra?) can be heard:
"They made signs that they wanted a light for their pipes, and then they stayed a few minutes talking to our sentries, or rather trying to do so:
1st Russian soldier: "Englise bono!"
1st English soldier: "Russke bono!"
2nd Russian soldier: "Francis bono!"
2nd English soldier: "Bono!"
3rd Russian soldier: "Oslem no bono!"
3rd English soldier: "Ah, ah! Turk no bono!"
1st Russian soldier: "Oslem!" making a face, and spitting on the ground to show his contempt.
1st English soldier: "Turk!" pretending to run away, as if frightened, upon which all the party go into roars of lafter, and after shaking hands, they return to their respective beats."
*There*, soldiers on all sides quickly picked up a pidginy sort of Parra from all the shopkeepers, spies, and other locals with whom they had to interact. The British, French, and Russian forces used it with each other in exchanges similar to the one recorded above.
Parra words entered the soldier slang of all three armies, and some of these words were brought back home and entered more general usage. Some can still be heard today. Here are a few that entered English and/or Scots, still sometimes heard in parts of Britain or America:
Barker (England) or Backer (NAL) (<baca, to look) - A street vendor, especially an especially insistent one. From the cry of vendors, "Baca! Baca!"
Bibi - (<bibi, to drink) a drink.
Cusey (<cusa, girl) - in 19th-century soldier slang, "prostitute;" now weakened to "woman of questionable morals."
Vitchey (<viçí) Awake, alert, paying attention
Almost a century later, in the Second Great War, many Soviet partisans fled Crimea in the wake of the German invasion. They first settled in various cities in the Italian peninsula, from which they organized the storied Free Crimean Soviet Army, which fought alongside the Allies in Italy and Austria. After the war the émigré community relocated to Munich, which as the capital of a moderate soviet republic was very sympathetic to the Crimeans. In the Munich neighborhoods where the Crimeans settled, Parra assumed a lively existence for a generation, but later, while the people maintained their Crimean home languages, they switched to German to communicate among themselves.