Only about a hundred words of the Crimean Gothic language have been preserved, in a letter written by Flemish diplomat Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq in 1562 and later published in 1589.
[5] A 9th-century life of Saint Cyril also mention Goths living on Crimea who used their own language and alphabet in religious services and to read the Bible.
[6] The existence of a Germanic language spoken on Crimea is next mentioned by Fleming William of Rubruck when he visited the area in the 13th century.
[6] Additionally, the primary source of information for Crimean Gothic, the Flemish diplomat Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (1562), seems to have wanted to learn about the language because he thought it would be useful.
[9] The sole longer attestation of Crimean Gothic is the "Fourth Turkish Letter" written by Flemish diplomatic Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, dated 1562 and first published in 1589.
[5] This is due to the presence of phonological features characteristic of or unique to East Germanic (such as Proto-Germanic (PGmc) /jj/→/ddj/),[17][18] as well as the high proportion of words only attested in Biblical Gothic.
Grønvik relied heavily on the distribution of short vowels in Crimean Gothic to make this conclusion;[20] however, other scholars have argued that these features could have been influenced by Busbecq's own knowledge of his native Flemish and German.