Laz language

The Laz language (lazuri, ლაზური or lazuri nena, ლაზური ნენა in Laz; ლაზური, lazuri, or ჭანური, chanuri, in Georgian) is spoken by the Laz people on the Southeast shore of the Black Sea. It is estimated that there are between 50,000 and 500,000 native speakers of Laz in Turkey, in a strip of land extending from Melyat to the Georgian border (officially called Lazistan until 1925), and about 30,000 in Georgia.

Linguistic classification

Laz is one of the four South Caucasian languages, closely related to Megrelian and somewhat less closely to Georgian. The Laz and Megrelian communities were separated by politics and religion around 500 years ago, and the languages are no longer mutually intelligible. The Laz-Megrelian branch apparently split from Georgian in the 1st millennium BC.

Dialects

Laz has five major dialects:

Hopan, spoken in Hopa and Ajaria;
Vitse-Arkabian, spoken in Arhavi and Fındıklı;
Chkhalan, spoken in Düzköy (Çxala), Borçka;
Atinan, spoken in Pazar (former Atina);
Ardeshenian, spoken in Ardeşen.

The last two are often treated as a single Atinan dialect. Speakers of different Laz dialects have trouble understanding each other, and often prefer to communicate in the local official language.

Geographical distribution

The ancient kingdom of Colchis was located in the same region the Laz speakers are found in today, and its inhabitants probably spoke an ancestral version of the language. Colchis was the setting for the famous Greek legend of Jason and the Argonauts.

Today most Laz speakers live in Northeast Turkey, in a strip of land along the shore of the Black Sea: in the Pazar (Atina), Ardeşen (Artaşen) and Fındıklı (Viče) districts of Rize, and in the Arhavi (Arkabi), Hopa (Xopa) and Borçka districts of Artvin. There are also communities in northwestern Anatolia (Karamürsel, in Akçakoca, Sakarya, Kocaeli, Bartın), where many immigrants settled since the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878) and now also in Istanbul and Ankara. Only a few Laz live in Georgia, chiefly in Ajaria (est. 30,000 speakers, about 2000 of them in Sarpi).

Social and cultural status

Laz has no official status in either Turkey or Georgia, and no written standard. It is presently used only for familiar and casual interaction; for literary, business, and other purposes, Laz speakers use their country's official language (Turkish or Georgian).

Laz is written in Georgian alphabet in Georgia. The preferred standard in Turkey is the Latin-based Lazoğlu script styled by Fahri Kahraman in 1984 . Laz speakers seem to be decreasing in number because of rapid assimilation into the mainstream Turkish society, and the language is in danger of extinction.

In recent times, the Laz folk musician Birol Topaloğlu has achieved a certain degree of international success with his albums Heyamo (1997, the first album ever sung entirely in the Laz language) and Aravani (2000).

In 2004, Dr. Mehmet Bekâroğlu, the deputy chairman of Felicity Party sent a notice to the state broadcasting corporation TRT declaring that his mother tongue is Laz and demanding broadcasts in Laz. The same year, a group of Laz intellectuals issued a petition and held a meeting with TRT officials for the implementation of Laz broadcasts. However, as of 2006, these requests have been ignored by authorities.

Language features

Familial features

Like many languages of the Caucasus, Laz has a rich consonantal system (in fact, the richest among the South Caucasian family) but only five vowels (a,e,i,o,u). The nouns are inflected with agglutinative suffixes to indicate grammatical function (4 to 7 cases, depending on the dialect) and number (singular or plural), but not by gender.

The Laz verb is inflected with suffixes according to person and number, and also for tense, aspect, mood, and (in some dialects) evidentiality. Up to 50 verbal prefixes are used to indicate spatial orientation/direction. Person and number suffixes provided for the subject as well as for one or two objects involved in the action, e.g. gimpulam = "I hide it from you".

Distinguishing features

Some distinctive features of Laz among its family are:

Two additional consonants, /f/ and /h/;
All nouns end with a vowel.
More extensive verb inflection, using directional prefixes.
Substantial lexical borrowings from Greek and Turkic languages.

External links

Lazuri Nena - The Language of the Laz by Silvia Kutscher.
All About Laz and their language.Lazish Cultur and Language Portal (In Turkish/Laz)
About Laz and their language.Lazish Cultur and Language Portal (In English)
Laz-Turkish full dictionary in word format

Kartvelian languages | Languages of Turkey | Languages of Georgia

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