Northwest Caucasian languages

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Distribution areas of the Northwest Caucasian languages ​​in the western Caucasus. Violet: Circassian dialects in the present, light brown: Abkhazian and Abasin (in the north) dialects in the present, dark yellow: Ubykh up to the 19th century.

The Northwest Caucasian languages , also known as West Caucasian , Abkhazian-Adygheic , or sometimes called Pontic (as opposed to Caspian for the Northeast Caucasian languages ), are a family of languages originally spoken in the northwestern Caucasus region, mainly in three Russian republics ( Adygea , Kabardino-Balkaria , Karachay-Cherkessia ) and the disputed territory of Abkhazia (whose sovereignty is claimed by Georgia ) and since the 19th century more numerous in the diaspora , especially in Turkey , with smaller communities in the Middle East .

The relationship of this language family to other language families is uncertain. The linguistic complex of the Caucasian languages , i.e. all languages ​​of the Caucasus region that do not belong to the Turkic and Indo-European language families that also occur there , has been classified as three language families in Caucasus since the 19th century : the Northwest Caucasian or Adyghe-Abkhaz language family , the Northeast Caucasian or Nakh-Dagestani language family, and the South Caucasian or Kartwelian language family . All three language families have been autochthonous in the Caucasus region for several millennia , so they were used before Turkic or Indo-European languages ​​became established in some sub-regions.

Speech situation

One Northwest Caucasian language, Ubykh , became extinct in 1992, while all other languages ​​are classified by UNESCO as "vulnerable", "endangered" or "critically endangered". However, they have been well positioned in the Caucasus in the regional framework since the early Soviet period as official and school languages ​​(up to the language of instruction at universities in Sukhumi , Maikop and Nalchik ) with their own publishing, print media and TV stations, which is why there are only a few regions here Observation of repression. Since the opening of the Soviet Union, the establishment as written languages ​​has also served as a model in the more numerous diaspora, where since the 19th century languages ​​have been pushed back more and mostly only survived as spoken languages ​​in villages with a predominant population of speakers of one of the Northwest Caucasian languages. The languages ​​there are now mostly written in the Cyrillic script adopted from the Caucasus .

Systematics

The Northwest Caucasian languages ​​can be divided into three branches, one of which is extinct, the other two include several traditional dialects, from which two established written languages were only formed in the 20th century :

The two or (with a more precise classification) three Abkhazian and two or (with diaspora) three Abasin dialects of the Abkhaz-Abasin branch did not develop apart in linguistic-historical terms until around the 13th century, sometimes much later (Abasin Ashqar dialect since 18th century) and are therefore partially understandable among each other. The six or (with a more precise classification and counting of the dialects only spoken in the diaspora) twelve dialects of the Circassian branch, which have also diverged since the 13th / 14th centuries, are just as close to each other.

The two main branches of the Northwest Caucasian language family, the Abkhaz-Abasin and the Circassian (Adygian), on the other hand, have been separated from each other for about 3000-5000 years and are mutually barely understandable. The historical position of Ubychian as a middle branch, but somewhat closer to Circassian, is controversial. For some researchers, it later moved away from the Circassian branch, for many researchers, on the other hand, from the Abkhaz-Abasin branch, but through long language contacts it moved closer to the Circassian dialects.

literature

Georgij A. Klimov: Introduction to Caucasian Linguistics. Hamburg 1994, pp. 47-87.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Klimov p. 48.
  2. ↑ Klimov, p. 47. This means that they are linguistically separated much longer than z. B. the West Germanic and North Germanic languages .
  3. ↑ Klimov p. 48.
  4. ↑ Amjad M. Jaimoukha: A Brief Account of the Circassian Language (PDF) mentions this change of perspective in Kaukasiology towards the second interpretation at the beginning of the 2nd paragraph.