The Cuman language, also known as Kipchak or Polovtsian, was a West Kipchak Turkic language spoken by the Cumans and Kipchaks, sharing similarities with today's various West Kipchak languages. It served as a significant literary language across Central and Eastern Europe, famously documented in medieval works like the Codex Cumanicus, and became the lingua franca of the Golden Horde.
This historically vital language is considered the direct ancestor of the modern Crimean Tatar language, and many other contemporary Turkic peoples, including the Nogais and Karachays, are descended from the Cumans. While it tragically went extinct in its last Hungarian stronghold of Cumania by the early 18th century—with István Varró of Karcag, who died in 1770, traditionally cited as its last speaker there—it successfully persisted in Crimea. The Cuman-Kipchaks left a profound historical and linguistic legacy across a vast region from Anatolia to Eastern Europe.