Abkhaz is an agglutinative Georgia (in the autonomous republic of Abkhazia) and Turkey. Abkhaz has about 100,000 speakers in Abkhazia, with up to 500,000 more living in northeastern Turkey. It belongs to the northwest Caucasian family spoken by only the Abazins, Adyghey, Kabardians and Circassians.

Classification

Abkhaz is a Northwest Caucasian language, indicating it originated in the northwest Caucasus. Northwest Caucasian languages are possibly related to Northeast Caucasian languages and both are usually indicated 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 to be related and are a geographically based convention.

Abkhaz is often claimed to be simply a divergent dialect of a larger language, Abkhaz-Abaza. It makes better linguistic sense, however, to separate Abkhaz and Abaza into two separate languages.

Geographical distribution

Abkhaz is mostly spoken in the Caucasus.

Official status

Abkhaz is the official language of Abkhazia, an autonomous republic of Georgia.

Dialects

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

Sounds

Like the other Northwest Caucasian languages, Abkhaz is very rich in consonants, but has only a few vowels. Below is the IPA phoneme chart, for the standard dialect; the Bzyb dialect has even more consonants.

• Labials: p pʼ b v f w m
• Dentals: t tʼ d n
• Labialized dentals: tʷ tʼʷ dʷ
• Alveolar sibilants: ts tsʼ dz s z
• Labialized alveolar sibilants: tsʷ tsʼʷ dzʷ
• Palatalized alveolar sibilants: tsʲ tsʼʲ dzʲ sʲ zʲ
• Postalveolar sibilants: tʃ tʃʼ dʒ ʃ ʒ
• Labialized postalveolar sibilants: tʃʷ dʒʷ
• Lateral: l
• Rhotic trill: r
• Palatals: kʲ kʼʲ gʲ j
• Velars: k kʼ g
• Uvulars: qʼ χ ʁ
• Palatized uvulars: qʼʲ χʲ ʁʲ
• Labialized uvulars: qʼʷ χʷ ʁʷ
• Pharyngeals: ħ ħʷ
• Labiopalatal semivowel: ɥ (< ʕʷ, a labialized voiced pharyngeal fricative)
• Vowels: ə a (with allophones [i] and [e] next to palatals, [o] and [u] next to labials)

Vowels

Abkhaz has only two distinctive vowels: an open vowel /a/ and a close vowel /ı, ǝ/. Depending on the environment both of the vowels can be realized as [e,i,o,u].

Consonants

Abzhuy Abkhaz has 58 consonants, whereas Bzyp has 67.

Writing system

Abkhaz has its own 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 1937, but after the death of Stalin, an Abkhaz desire to remain separate from Georgians led to the development of the current Cyrillic alphabet in 1954 by Dimitri Gulya, ironically ethnic Georgian (mingrealian).

History

The first fragments of Abkhazian language that we have were taken down in the Arabic alphabet by the Turkish traveller Evliya Celebi in the 11th century. Abkhaz has only been a full literary language for about 100 years, and during the Stalinist Russian years Abkhaz was banned as a literary language.

External links

• Ethnologue entry for Abkhaz (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ABK)
• Abkhaz at Language Museum (http://www.language-museum.com/a/abkhaz.php)

Example of Abkhaz language: [1] (http://www.kapba.de/A-Abtsara.html)