Rumeíka
| Mariupolitan Greek | |
|---|---|
| Rumeíka | |
| Native to | Ukraine |
| Region | Northern coast of the Sea of Azov |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | mari1411 |
| Linguasphere | 56-AAA-ak (?) |
Mariupolitan Greek, also known as Rumeíka (Rumaiica, from Greek: Ρωμαίικα, "Romaic"; Russian: Румейский язык; Ukrainian: Румейська мова), is the Greek dialect spoken by the ethnic Greeks living along the northern coast of the Sea of Azov, in southeastern Ukraine. Although Rumeíka, along with the Turkic Urum language, remained the main language spoken by the Azov Greeks well into the 20th century, currently it is used by only a small part of Ukraine's ethnic Greeks.
The Crimea was Greek-speaking for more than a thousand years as a part of the Byzantine Empire. After the Fourth Crusade's sacking of Constantinople fragmented the Byzantine Empire, the Crimea became a principality within the Greek Empire of Trebizond. When that state, which was centered on the eastern Black Sea coast and Pontic Alps of northeastern Anatolia, fell to the Ottomans in 1461, the Crimean Greek principality (Principality of Theodoro) remained independent, becoming subject to the Ottomans in 1475. The beginning of large-scale settlement of Greeks in the steppe region north of the Sea of Azov dates to the Russo-Turkish War (1768–74), when Catherine the Great of Russia invited Greeks of the Crimea to resettle to recently conquered lands (including founding Mariupol) to escape persecution in the then Muslim dominated Crimea.
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