Abkhaz language

Abkhaz is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken in Georgia and Turkey by the Abkhazians. Abkhaz has about 100,000 speakers in Abkhazia with up to 500,000 more living in Turkey. Georgian Constitution establishes Abkhaz as the second official language of Georgia (on the territory of Abkhazia).Abkhazia is de jure part of Georgia

Classification

Abkhaz is a Northwest Caucasian language, indicating it originated in the northwest Caucasus. Northwest Caucasian languages have been suggested as being related to the Northeast Caucasian languages and both are often merged under the blanket term "North Caucasian languages." Sometimes North Caucasian languages and South Caucasian languages are grouped into the Caucasian languages, but these have not been shown conclusively to be related and are widely considered to be a geographically based convention.

Abkhaz is often united with Abaza into one language, Abkhaz-Abaza, of which the literary dialects of Abkhaz and Abaza are simply the most divergent forms. Grammatically, the two are very similar; however, the differences in phonology are substantial, and are the main reason why many other linguists prefer to keep the two separate.

Some consider the proposed North Caucasian family to be a member of the Dene-Caucasian macrofamily; however, the Dene-Caucasian hypothesis is itself unproven and highly controversial, and attempts to categorize Abkhaz as a Dene-Caucasian language are thus premature.

Geographical distribution

Abkhaz is spoken primarily in Abkhazia and Turkey.

Official status

Abkhaz is the second official language of Georgia on the territory of Abkhazia).

Dialects

Abkhaz is generally viewed as having three major dialects, Abzhywa, Bzyp (the Caucasian dialects) and Sadz (in Turkey).

Sounds

Like the other Northwest Caucasian languages, Abkhaz is very rich in consonants, with 58, but has only a few vowels (either two or three, depending upon the analysis). Below is the IPA phoneme chart for the standard dialect (Abzhuy); the Bzyp dialect has nine additional consonants, and the Sadz dialect has a few less.

Labials:
Dentals:
Labialized dentals:
Alveolar sibilants:
Labialized alveolar sibilants:
Palatalized alveolar sibilants:
Postalveolar sibilants:
Labialized postalveolar sibilants:
Lateral:
Rhotic trill:
Palatals:
Velars:
Uvulars:
Palatized uvulars:
Labialized uvulars:
Pharyngeals:
Labiopalatal semivowel: (< , a labialized voiced pharyngeal fricative)
Vowels: (with allophones and next to palatals, and next to labials, and and next to labiopalatals)

Vowels

Abkhaz has only two distinctive vowels: an open vowel and a close vowel . Depending on the environment both of the vowels can be realized as .

Typology

Abkhaz is typologically classified as an agglutinative language. Like all other Northwest Caucasian languages, Abkhaz has an extremely complex verbal system coupled with a very simple noun system; Abkhaz distinguishes just two cases, the nominative and the adverbial.

Writing system

Abkhaz has had its own adaptation of the Cyrillic alphabet, the Abkhaz alphabet, since 1862. The first alphabet was a 37 character Cyrillic alphabet invented by Baron Peter von Uslar. In 1909 a 55 letter Cyrillic alphabet was used. A 75-letter Latin script devised by a Georgian linguist Nikolai (Niko) Marr lasted from 1926 to 1928, when another Latin script was used. The Georgian script was imposed in 1938, but after the death of Stalin, an Abkhaz desire to remain separate from Georgians led to the reintroduction of the current Cyrillic alphabet in 1954 designed in 1892 by Dimitri Gulya together with Konstantin Machavariani and modified in 1909 by Aleksey Chochua.

History

The earliest extant written records of the Abkhazian language are in the Arabic alphabet, recorded by the Turkish traveller Evliya Celebi in the 17th century. Abkhaz has only been used as a literary language for about 100 years. During the Stalinist Russian years Abkhaz was banned as a literary language.

Bibliography

Chirikba, V. A. (1996) 'A Dictionary of Common Abkhaz'. Leiden.
Chirikba, V. A. (2003) 'Abkhaz'. – Languages of the World/Materials 119. Muenchen: Lincom Europa.
Hewitt, B. George (1979) 'Abkhaz: A descriptive Grammar'. Amsterdam: North Holland.
Hewitt, B. George (1989) Abkhaz. In John Greppin (ed.), The Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus Vol. 2. Caravan Books, New York. 39-88.
Vaux, Bert and Zihni Psiypa (1997) The Cwyzhy Dialect of Abkhaz. Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics 6, Susumu Kuno, Bert Vaux, and Steve Peter, eds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Linguistics Department.

Notes

External links

Example of Abkhaz language: ^*

Abkhazia | Caucasian languages | Languages of Georgia | Languages of Turkey

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