Crimean Tatar is spoken in Crimea and the Crimean Tatar diasporas of Uzbekistan, Romania, Turkey and Bulgaria, as well as small communities in the United States and Canada. It should not be confused with Tatar, spoken in Tatarstan and adjacent regions in Russia. Crimean Tatar is written in both Cyrillic and Latin scripts.
Crimean Tatar is one of the most seriously endangered languages in Europe. Almost all Crimean Tatars are bilingual or multilingual, using the dominant languages of their respective home countries, such as Russian, Turkish, Romanian, Uzbek, Bulgarian or Ukrainian.
Today, more than 260,000 Crimean Tatars live in Crimea. Approximately 120,000 reside in Central Asia (mainly in Uzbekistan), where their ancestors had been deported in 1944 during World War II by the Soviet Union. However, of all these people, mostly the older generations are the only ones still speaking Crimean Tatar. In 2013, the language was estimated to be on the brink of extinction, being taught in only around 15 schools in Crimea.
Turkey has provided support to Ukraine, to aid in bringing the schools teaching in Crimean Tatar to a modern state. An estimated 5 million people of Crimean origin live in Turkey, descendants of those who emigrated in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Smaller Crimean Tatar communities such as (Dobrujan Tatars) are also found in Romania (22,000) and Bulgaria (1,400).
Islam is the dominant religion with almost no known Christians (0 - 0.1%).