Abkhaz language

Abkhazian (аҧсуа бызшәа)
Spoken in	Abkhazia ( Georgia ), Turkey , Russia
speaker	approximately 117,000
Linguistic ; classification	Northwest Caucasian languages Abkhazian-Abasinian Abkhazian ;
Official status
Official language in	Abkhazia
Recognized minority / ; regional language in	Georgia
Language codes
ISO 639 -1	from
ISO 639 -2	abb
ISO 639-3	abb

The Abkhazian language (proper name: аҧсуа бызшәа , [ аpʰswa bəzʃʷa ]) is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken by the Abkhazian people in Abkhazia , Georgia , Turkey , Russia and in some other countries with the Abkhazian diaspora . The number of speakers is estimated at around 106,000 to 125,000 people.

history

Dmitri Gulia , one of the founders of modern Abkhazian literature

The Abkhaz, the language of the people of Abkhazia . It was just a spoken language for centuries. Abkhazian sagas and stories, such as the Narten , were mostly passed on orally for a long time.

In late antiquity Georgian and partly also Greek and from the 9th century only Georgian were used as the written language in today's Abkhazia. It is unclear whether Georgian was exclusively the language of the upper class and to what extent the ordinary population also used this language. With the Russian conquest of the Caucasus, Georgian was finally replaced by Russian as the written language in Abkhazia .

The first fragments of the Abkhazian language were written in Arabic by the Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi in the 17th century . In the Russian Empire , the development of different alphabets and spellings for Abkhazian began in the mid-19th century. The first standardized Abkhaz alphabet was developed in 1862 by the German-Russian nobleman Peter von Uslar and consisted of 37 Cyrillic letters.

Abkhazian was thus at the end of the 19th century, a literary language .

At the beginning of the 20th century, a new, separate Abkhazian literature emerged, the most important representatives of which were Dmitri Gulia , Samson Tschanba and Bagrat Schinkuba . However, several well-known Abkhazian writers, including Fasil Iskander and Georgi Gulia , wrote in Russian . After the October Revolution of 1917, the Abkhazian language flourished for a short time. An Abkhazian press was formed for the first time, so in 1919 the Apsny, which still exists today, was the first Abkhazian-language newspaper.

This brief period of development was followed by a period of oppression during the Stalinist era . The Abkhaz Soviet Republic was dissolved and attached to the Georgian SSR , Abkhazian was now compulsorily written using the Georgian alphabet , Abkhaz schools were systematically closed and Abkhaz activists were executed. Georgian and Russian dominated public life. With the death of Stalin in 1953, most of the restrictive measures against Abkhazia and Abkhazia were lifted, and the Cyrillic alphabet was returned to. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, many Abkhazians no longer spoke Abkhazian.

Today Abkhazian (together with Russian) is the official language in the Republic of Abkhazia, which is only recognized by a few countries . The language is now being taught systematically in schools there. In Abkhazia, however, Russian is dominant in public life, although the importance of Abkhazian is growing. The Georgian Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia also provides Abkhazian as the regional official language.

distribution

Ethnologue gives the number of Abkhazian speakers at just under 113,000. In 2011, however, there were already more than 122,000 Abkhazians living in Abkhazia, but not all of them also spoke the Abkhazian language.

In 1993, the number of Abkhaz speakers in Georgia, including Abkhazia, was 101,000. In addition, there are speakers of Abkhazian in the diaspora, especially in Russia, where around 11,000 Abkhazians live. The number of Abkhazian speakers in Turkey is difficult to determine due to a lack of documentation and the lack of a real census. It is estimated at around 4,000, the ethnic Abkhaz population is given up to 39,000. Some Abkhazian language islands and diaspora communities can also be found in the Ajarian area in southwest Georgia. There are also smaller Abkhaz communities in Ukraine and Syria .

Dialects

Abkhazian is often referred to together with Abasinian (spoken in the Russian republic of Karachay-Cherkessia ) as a dialect of a common Abkhazian-Abasin language. In linguistics, however , Abkhazian and Abasinian are mostly viewed as two different languages. Abkhazian is divided into several dialects, three of which are still spoken in Abkhazia: (from west to east) Bsyp, Abshuj and - as a smaller dialect - Samursakan (not to be confused with the Mingrelian dialect Samursakan-Zugdidi ). Other dialects are spoken in Turkey today - such as Sads, Achtschipsa and Tsabal, as well as Bsyp.

Linguistic characteristics

The Abkhaz language is characterized by an unusually large number of consonants and an unusually small number of vowels. It has two phonologically distinctive vowels: an open vowel a and a closed vowel ə . Depending on the word environment, these vowels can be pronounced as e, i, o, or u . The Abshuj dialect has 58 consonants, the Bsyp dialect even 67.

Abkhazian is an agglutinating ergative language . The personal pronouns are genera distinguished. While the morphology of the noun is relatively simple (there are only a few cases ), that of the verb is very complex (it is mainly based on prefiguring ).

font

The Cyrillic letter Ҩ is typical of today's Abkhazian alphabet

The first written records of Abkhazian are in the Arabic alphabet and were written down by Evliya Çelebi in the 17th century . The first standardized Abkhaz alphabet was developed in 1862 by Baron Peter von Uslar and consisted of 37 Cyrillic letters. From 1905 a Cyrillic alphabet with 55 letters was used. Nikolai Marr developed a 75-letter Latin alphabet that was used from 1926 to 1928 when a new Latin script was introduced. In 1937, an alphabet based on the Georgian script was introduced, but was rejected by the Abkhaz population. After Josef Stalin's death in 1954, the Abkhazian Cyrillic alphabet, which is still used today, was introduced, which was designed by Dmitri Gulia and Konstantin Matschawariani in 1892.

Today's Abkhazian Cyrillic alphabet contains numerous letters that only exist in Abkhazian.

Text sample

General Declaration of Human Rights in Abkhazian	Transliteration
Дарбанзаалак ауаҩы дшоуп ихы дақәиҭны. Ауаа зегь зинлеи патулеи еиҟароуп. Урҭ ирымоуп ахшыҩи аламыси, дара дарагь аешьеи аешьеи реиҧш еизыҟазароуп.	Darbanzaalak auaɥy dshoup ihy daqwithny. Auaa zegj zinlei patulei eiqaroup. Urth irymoup ahshyɥi alamysi, dara daragj aesjei aesjei reiphsh eizyqazaroup.

Translation: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should meet one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

literature

Georgij A. Klimov: Introduction to Caucasian Linguistics . Translated from the Russian by Jost Gippert. Buske, Hamburg 1994. ISBN 3-87548-060-0
Vjačeslav A. Čirikba: Abkhaz . LINCOM Europe, Munich 2003. ISBN 3-89586-136-7 (English)
George Hewitt: Abkhaz. Lingua Descriptive Studies. North-Holland, Amsterdam 1979. (English)
KV Lomtatidze: Grammatika abchazskogo jazyka, fonetika i morfologija . Sukhumi 1968. (Russian)
N. Yes. Marr: O jazyke i istorii abchazov . Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow 1938. (Russian)
Teimuraz Gvanceladze: ABKHAZIAN AND GEORGIAN LANGUAGES FOR THE LEARNERS. (PDF; 912 kB) About Abkhazian a. Georgian grammar. In: VOLUME I. UNESCO, 2003, archived from the original on January 8, 2004 ; Retrieved August 12, 2013 (Georgian).
Wolfgang Schulze: Abkhazian. (PDF, 255 kB) In: Encyclopedia of the European East. University of Klagenfurt, accessed on July 7, 2009 .