The Karaim, which is considered to be one of the smallest Turkic languages, is still spoken by small groups in the Ukraine (in Halyč) and Lithuania (in Trakai and Vilnius). It is divided into three main dialects, namely: the Trakai dialect spoken by approximately 65 people in Lithuania; the Halyč dialect, still in use by several elderly ladies in Halyč and Ivano-Frankivsk; and finally the Crimean Karaim dialect, which was used mostly in Simferopol, Eupatoria, Feodosia and Sevastopol. Although, at present, the number of Crimean Karaims approximates 515, this dialect is considered to be extinct by now. The first two above mentioned dialects form the so called Western branch of Karaim in opposition to Crimean Karaim which is also called Eastern Karaim.

What is certain about history of Karaim is that it was originally spoken in the Crimean peninsula prior to the Mongol invasion - till the 13th century. But it is difficult to say whether it was already divided into dialects before its users left the peninsula or it existed as one homogeneous tongue. Some scholars claim that some lexical and phonetic similarities between Halyč and Crimean Karaim, which cannot be found in the Trakai dialect, are to be explained by Oghuz influence exerted on the Halyč dialect before the 13th century. It would mean that the Halyč and Trakai dialects were already two separate idioms then. Still, we do not have enough linguistic evidence to answer this question. Also, one should remember that these similarities could also be explained by later contacts between Halyč and Crimean Karaims in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Although some scholars such as W. Radloff or J. Grzegorzewski, had mentioned it before, it was Kowalski who first showed that Western Karaim is closely related to the language known from Codex Cumanicus and to Old Written Armeno-Kipchak by comparing these languages to each other. As far as the position of Karaim dialects among the modern Turkic languages is concerned they belong - together with Kumyk, Karachay-Balkar and Crimean Tatar - to the Western, or North-Western group of Kipchak languages.

It is also difficult to say if Western and Eastern Karaim are dialects of one language or should be treated as separate languages. Although Western Karaims, since they left the Crimean peninsula, were living in non turkic linguistic milieu, their written language altered very little - it remained more or less as it was in the 14th century. But this does not concern the Crimean Karaim, since after the conquest of the Crimea by the Turks in the 15th century, the Ottomans directly influenced the languages of all the Kipchak tribes of the peninsula, changing the lingual appearance of the area. This Oghuz appearance of Crimean Karaim led to discussion if it still belongs to the Kipchak group of Turkic languages or it should be classified as an Oghuz one and if it should be treated separately from Western Karaim. That is why we say today that "modern Western Karaim is unlike modern Crimean Karaim, and should be related to an earlier historical stage of this language. However, it is not correct to compare languages at different historical stages [...]. Therefore, there is no other solution than to separate modern Western Karaim from modern Crimean Karaim" (Jankowski 2003: 147).