Abkhaz language

Abkhaz is a Northwest Caucasian language and is thus related to Adyghe. The language of Abkhaz is especially close to Abaza, and they are sometimes considered dialects of the same language, Abazgi, of which the literary dialects of Abkhaz and Abaza are simply two ends of a dialect continuum. Grammatically, the two are very similar; however, the differences in phonology are substantial, it also contains elements characteristic of Kabardian; these are the main reasons for many others to prefer keeping the two separate, while others mentions that there are possible indications that proto-Northwest Caucasian, could have divided firstly into proto-Circassian and to proto-Ubykh-Abkhaz; Ubykh then being the closest relative to Abkhaz, with it only later on being influenced by Circassian. == Geographical distribution ==

There is not an agreed number of speakers of Abkhaz, and there are widely different numbers. It is agreed that today most of the Abkhaz people do not live in Abkhazia. In the census conducted by the Republic of Abkhazia in 2011, Abkhazians comprised 50.8% of the population, around 122,175 people; of these 92,838 spoke it natively. The rest of the Abkhaz speaking population inhabits other neighbouring areas. The exact number of Abkhazians and Abkhaz speakers in Turkey is not clear. The Turkish census denotes 13,951, but the figures are dubious, since the numbers of Abkhazians that came from the beginning of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th have been documented at around 30 thousand. Ethnologue gives 150,000 Abkhazians living in Turkey, of these 50,000 still speak the language. In general, Abkhaz seems to have been lost by most of the descendants, and bilingualism being low except in some specific areas, although there seems to be an effort for the new generation to learn the language with public schools being able to teach Abkhaz and together with 7,836 second language speakers. Today they are exclusively spoken in the northwestern part of Turkey, specially in the Sakarya province, it being spoken in 14 villages. The other major place where Abkhaz is spoken is in Karachay-Cherkessia, where the Northern dialects are spoken, although there they are considered as a separate language and form the literary Abaza language. with about 982 people considering Abkhaz their first language. There were also communities in Syria, Jordan and Iraq with around 5,000 Abkhazians, The biggest western diaspora is in Germany, with around 5,000 speakers, but other communities are found in countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Austria, France, Belgium and so on. == History ==

The earliest indisputable extant written records of the Abkhaz language are in the Arabic script, recorded by the Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi in the 17th century. Abkhaz has been used as a literary language for only about 100 years. It was suggested that certain inscriptions on Ancient Greek pottery which had been considered nonsense are in fact written in Abkhaz-Adydge languages. The methodology of the research was criticised and the results called improbable. In 1918, Tbilisi State University became the first institution of higher education to teach Abkhazian language. The founders of the university began to take care of the development and scientific study of the Abkhazian language. At the meeting of the Council of Professors held at Tbilisi State University in 1918, Ivane Javakhishvili noted the scientific importance of studying Caucasian languages. In 1918, by the decision of the Council of Professors, Petre Charaia was invited to teach the Abkhazian language, and from 1925, this mission was continued by Dimitri Gulia and Simon Janashia. == Status ==

Both Georgian and Abkhaz law enshrines an official status of the Abkhaz language in Abkhazia. The 1992 law of Georgia, reiterated in the 1995 constitution, grants Abkhaz the status of second official language in the territory of Abkhazia — along with Georgian. In November 2007, the de facto authorities of Abkhazia adopted a new law "on the state language of the Republic of Abkhazia" that mandates Abkhaz as the language of official communication. According to the law, all meetings held by the president, parliament, and government must be conducted in Abkhaz (instead of Russian, which is currently a de facto administrative language) from 2010, and all state officials will be obliged to use Abkhaz as their language of everyday business from 2015. Some, however, have considered the implementation of this law unrealistic and concerns have been made that it will drive people away from Abkhazia and hurt the independent press due to a significant share of non-Abkhaz speakers among ethnic minorities as well as Abkhaz themselves, and a shortage of teachers of Abkhaz. The law is an attempt to amend a situation where up to a third of the ethnic Abkhaz population are no longer capable of speaking their ethnic language, and even more are unable to read or write it; instead, Russian is the language most commonly used in public life at present. == Dialects ==

Classification Abkhaz is generally viewed as having three major dialects: • Abzhywa, spoken in the Caucasus, and named after the historical area of Abzhywa (Абжьыуа), sometimes referred to as Abzhui, the Russified form of the name (Abzhuiski dialekt, derived from the Russian form of the name for the area, ). • Bzyb or Bzyp, spoken in the Caucasus and in Turkey, and named after the Bzyb () area. • Sadz, nowadays spoken only in Turkey, formerly also spoken between the rivers Bzyp and Khosta. The literary language is based on the Abzhywa dialect. Below is a classification of Abkhaz dialects according to Chirikba (1996): • Common Abkhaz (Proto-Abkhaz) • North Abkhaz • Tapanta • Ashkharywa • South Abkhaz • Southwestern • Sadz • Southeastern • Ahchypsy, Bzyp • Tsabal, Abzhywa General characteristics In some form or the other, all dialects are richer in phonemes than the standard Abzhywa dialect. The only dialects spoken in Abkhazia are Abzhywa and Bzyp. Northern dialects which are the basis for literary Abaza are spoken in Karachay-Cherkessia, while the other dialects such as Sadz are spoken in Turkey due to Russian invasions in the 19th century. While most differences are phonetic, differences in the lexicon are present, although mostly due to exterior contact. Bzyp contains the most preserved lexicon, with few borrowings. Abzhywa has adopted many loans from Kartvelian, specially Mingrelian; Sadz on the other hand has more words from Circassian. Northern dialects in general have more loanwords from Persian, Arabic, Turkish and Circassian. == Phonology ==

Consonants Abkhaz has a very large number of consonants (58 in the literary dialect), with three-way voiced/voiceless/ejective and palatalized/labialized/plain distinctions. By contrast, the language has only two phonemically distinct vowels, which have several allophones depending on the palatal and/or labial quality of adjacent consonants. Labialised alveolo-palatal fricatives are found in the Bzyp and Sadz dialects of Abkhaz, but not in Abzhywa. Plain alveolo-palatal consonants and the pharyngealised and labialised-pharyngealised uvular fricatives are unique to the Bzyp dialect. The consonants highlighted in red and in brackets are the 4 kinds of labialisation described by Chirikba. Vowels The nature of the vowels of Abkhaz is not clear. Some linguists, characterise the vowel system as a 2 degree vertical vowel system; with the two vowels being distinguished by height, 'ә' being the high/close vowel, and 'а' being the low/open. This system would very closely resemble the one found in Adyghe. The quality of 'ә' in this case, is usually represented as [ɨ] if the vowel is in a stressed position, and being unaffected by its neighbouring consonants. Other linguists however, mainly Russian ones, describe the vowels differently. They describe the sound of 'ә' being completely different from [ɨ], and by their descriptions being closer to [ə]. The 'а' is described as being particularly back, likely [ɑ]. == Writing system ==

Abkhaz has used the Cyrillic script 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 Russian/Georgian linguist Nikolai Marr lasted for 2 years 1926–1928 (during the Latinization campaign). The Georgian script was adopted and used between 1938 and 1954, after that the initial Cyrillic alphabet, designed in 1892 by Dmitry Gulia together with Konstantin Machavariani and modified in 1909 by Aleksey Chochua, was restored to use. Cyrillic script: Latin script: Unicode The Latin alphabet in Abkhaz is currently not in Unicode. Its inclusion was proposed in 2011. == Grammar ==

Typical of Northwest Caucasian languages, Abkhaz is an agglutinative language that relies heavily on affixation. It has an ergative-absolutive typology, such that the subject of an intransitive verb functions identically to the object of a transitive verb. Notably, Abkhaz expresses ergativity entirely through the ordering of subjects and objects within verb constructions All Latin transliterations in this section utilize the system explicated in Chirikba (2003) (see Abkhaz alphabet for the details). Verbs DETR:detrimental BENF:benefactive PREV:preverb SPREV:stem preverb EXT:extension MSD:masdar RECI:reciprocal Abkhaz morphology features a highly complex verb system that could be called a "sentence in miniature." Chirikba (2003) describes Abkhaz as a "verbocentric" language wherein verbs occupy the "central part of the morphology." However, despite its complexity, Abkhaz verbal morphology is highly regular. Abkhaz, being an ergative language, makes a strong distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs, as well as dynamic and stative. Stative verbs describe states of being, roughly analogous to copular phrases in English, as in (d-x˚əčә́-wə-p - "she is a child"). Dynamic verbs express direct actions, functioning more closely to standard English verbs. Dynamic verbs possess the full range of aspect, mood and tense forms, in contrast to statives, which do not. Roughly equivalent to the infinitive, the Masdar form of the verb resembles the English gerund. It is formed by the addition of a specific suffix to a bare verb stem, -ра (-ra) for a dynamic verb and -заара (-zaara) for a stative. {{fs interlinear|indent=4 Various prefixes can be added to the Masdar to form entire dependent clauses, as in Verbs are thus formed by the addition of various affixes to the verb stem; these affixes express such distinctions as transitivity, person and stative/dynamic quality, occupying rigid positions within the overall verb structure. Not all of these elements will necessarily co-occur in every verb. The individual parts of verb morphology are addressed below. First Position The first prefixing element of the verb complex expresses either the subject of an intransitive verb in the absolutive construction, or the direct object of a transitive verb in an ergative construction. The following table illustrates the various agreement markers which can occupy the first position. These prefixes can either be in their long forms, containing the letters inside the parenthesis, or in the short forms that do not contain them. The rules for using them are the following: • If the prefix is followed by a consonant cluster, the long form is used. • If the stress falls on the prefix, the long form is used. • If the prefix is not followed by a consonant cluster, the short form is used. • If the stress does not fall on the prefix, the short form is used. } It is also possible for the possessive prefix ҽы́- (čə́-) in a reflexive construction or the relative prefix иы́- (jә́-) in a non-finite construction to occupy this position. Example of an absolutive construction with the intransitive subject in the first slot highlighted {{fs interlinear|indent=4 Number The suffix -kºá pluralizes a stative verb. Tense Several tense markers occupy this position, dependent upon whether the verb in question is stative or dynamic. Dynamic verbs have a richly developed tense paradigm incorporating tense and aspect distinctions. The table below illustrates these various dynamic tense forms using the verb агара (agara – "to take"). Stative verbs, by contrast, lack this rich tense system, as illustrated below using the verb а́цәара (ácºara - "to be sleeping"). Negation (Stative) The negation prefix m- occupies this position in a stative verb construction. {{fs interlinear|indent=4 Stative verbs form the imperative simply by adding the durative suffix -z to the verb stem. Thus Nouns Like verbs, Abkhaz nouns are formed by the addition of various prefixes and suffixes to a static noun stem. The affixes mark number, definiteness and possession, as well as some case-like elements. As with verbs, not all of these elements can occur at the same time. The individual parts of noun morphology are addressed below. Article Affixes There is a range of definiteness in Abkhaz. Those articles adhering to definite/generic categories appear as prefixes in the broader noun structure, whereas the indefinite is suffixed. The absence of either article affix implies a zero reference implying universal quantifiers, or to express the total lack of a referent. {{fs interlinear|indent=4 Definite and indefinite affixes may appear together in the same noun, implying that the referents are meant as a group or body. {{fs interlinear|indent=4 There are some semantic differences in article usage between the different dialects of Abkhaz. Inflectional Prefixes These are possessive prefixes which express grammatical person and noun class. • Comparative suffix -ҵас (-c’as), as in: ҩнҵа́с (jºənc’ás - "like a house") There are also several plural endings that are of much narrower use. } It is common in everyday speech to use a short version of the pronoun which omits the suffix -рá (-rá), although this is done less frequently with third-person pronouns. In addition to noun-marking, possession can be indicated by adding the suffix -тәы́ (-t’˚ә́) to the short version of a personal pronoun. Thus: ::стәы́ (st’˚ә́ - "mine") ::лтәы́ (lt’˚ә́ - "hers") Intensive pronouns are derived from short-form personal pronouns combined with the suffix -хаҭá (-xatá). These have a roughly reflexive meaning. ::сарá (sará - "I") ::схаҭá (sxatá - "I myself") Similarly to nouns, adjective stems can be derived by compounding, reduplication and affixation. When used attributively, adjectives follow the noun that they modify. Predicative adjectives, or those derived by suffixation, precede the noun. {{fs interlinear|indent=4 Adjective Suffixes These suffixes are added to the adjective stem to show agreement with the noun being modified. The comparative form of an adjective is formed using the comparative particle аиҳá (ajhá - "more"), which precedes the adjective. The superlative form is indicated by the intensifier suffix -ӡа. Thus: {{fs interlinear|indent=4 {{fs interlinear|indent=4 == Sample text ==

Original version Transliteration '''' ===ISO 9 Romanization=== '''' Translation "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." Phonetic transcription == Notes ==