About

An English dictionary of Karachay, the Turkic language of the Karachay people of the North Caucasus, and the first part of a larger platform for learning the language.

What this is

The project starts with the reference work, the foundation everything else will stand on. That means the dictionary itself, related words (synonyms, opposites and word families), themed word lists, fixed expressions, and a full table of forms for every word that has them. You can search in Karachay or in English, in either script, and a form you find in a text leads back to its word.

A learning platform will be built on top of it later, with no promised date.

Why it exists

There are dozens of Karachay dictionaries, written in Russian, in Turkish and in Karachay itself. Until now there was no comprehensive one between Karachay and English. Beyond dictionaries there is almost no learning material in English, such as workbooks, phrasebooks or conversation guides, and what little exists is mostly for specialists. Steve Seegmiller's grammar is an excellent reference, written for linguists rather than for learners.

Who it is for

English-speaking Karachay people, many of them in the United States, who want to learn the language of their families and hold on to their heritage. Most understand some of the language, speak little of it, and find almost nothing to learn from. It may also be useful to speakers in the Caucasus, in Turkey and elsewhere, and to researchers.

Which Karachay

The dictionary follows the Karachay literary standard, the written form taught in schools and used in books and newspapers, rather than any one region or family. It draws on the work of several dictionary authors, some writing in Russian and some in Turkish. Many of those dictionaries cover Karachay and Balkar together; this one focuses on Karachay. Where a Balkar spelling of a word is shown, it is labeled as such. The dictionary also includes the loanwords Karachays commonly use in speech, whether they live in Russia or in Turkey, each labeled with the language it came from.

How entries are made

The printed dictionaries are treated as evidence rather than final rulings. They often disagree with one another, some reflect Soviet-era ideology, many describe Karachay and Balkar together without always saying which is which, and scanned copies can contain reading errors. So each entry is compared across several of them and checked against a body of Karachay writing: fiction, poetry, textbooks, language books and academic works. Nearly every definition cites the published dictionaries it rests on. Definitions are written in original English; the sources' wording is not reproduced.

An AI model drafts each entry from the evidence gathered for the word, with the dictionary citations behind its meanings. A program checks every proposed change against the dictionary's rules and holds what does not pass, and a new meaning goes on the site only after it has been approved.

Many of the common words have been reviewed by native speakers. Many others were reviewed by AI models against their cited sources, not by a speaker. Entries do not yet show which kind of review they had. Where the evidence is thin, the entry is held back rather than guessed.

Today the site holds 9,973 entries drawing on 27 cited works, listed on the sources page.

The form tables

The tables of conjugations, cases and possessive forms are not typed in by hand. They are built from each word's spelling by the language's own sound and suffix rules, and the search reads the same forms, so a word can be found from any of its forms, endings and all. The forms are checked by reading them back the way the search does, to make sure each one leads to the word it was built from, and the site cannot be published unless these checks pass. Where a form is generated but never found in writing, or a word's stem is unsettled, the entry says so.

Not here yet

There is no audio pronunciation and there are no lessons yet. Both are planned.

Who makes it

I'm Davud Kaplan, a software engineer. I'm Karachay, but I grew up speaking English and I'm still learning the language. I'm not a linguist or a native speaker, and for what I could not know myself I rely on native speakers I know. I started the project in July 2026. It is independent and self-funded, with no institutional affiliation. I've written about why I started it and how the dictionary is made in Building a Karachay-English Dictionary.

Helping

Corrections are the most useful thing you can send: a wrong definition, a form no one says, a missing meaning, or a word the dictionary does not have yet. Use Suggest a correction at the foot of any page, or the feedback links on each entry. It also helps to know where you heard a word, who says it, and what they meant by it.

To contribute in other ways, or to ask about the project, write to contact@karachay.com.

Using the data

The dictionary content (definitions, examples, word lists, expressions and the generated tables) is licensed CC BY 4.0. You may quote it, teach from it and build on it, commercially or not, as long as you credit it, link to the license and say what you changed. The source dictionaries belong to their authors and publishers. They are cited, never reproduced, and the license does not cover them.

The conventions the entries use are explained on abbreviations and conventions, and the spelling on spelling and scripts.