Related Research Articles
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family—English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, and Spanish—have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across several continents. The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, of which there are eight groups with languages still alive today: Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Indo-Iranian, and Italic/Romance; and another nine subdivisions that are now extinct.
Nostratic is a hypothetical language macrofamily including many of the language families of northern Eurasia. Although the exact composition varies based on proponent, it typically comprises Kartvelian, Indo-European and Uralic languages; some languages from the similarly controversial Altaic family; the Afroasiatic languages; as well as the Dravidian languages.
The North Caucasian languages, sometimes called simply Caucasic, is a proposed language family consisting of a pair of well established language families spoken in the Caucasus, predominantly in the north, consisting of the Northwest Caucasian family and the Northeast Caucasian family. There are some 34 to 38 distinct North Caucasian languages.
The Georgians, or Kartvelians, are a nation and indigenous Caucasian ethnic group native to Georgia and the South Caucasus. Georgian diaspora communities are also present throughout Russia, Turkey, Greece, Iran, Ukraine, United States, and European Union.
The Laz language or Lazuri is a Kartvelian language spoken by the Laz people on the southeastern shore of the Black Sea. In 2007, it was estimated that there were around 20,000 native speakers in Turkey, in a strip of land extending from Melyat to the Georgian border, and around 1,000 native speakers around Adjara in Georgia. There are also around 1,000 native speakers of Laz in Germany.
Mingrelian or Megrelian is a Kartvelian language spoken in Western Georgia, primarily by the Mingrelians. The language was also called Kolkhuri in the early 20th century. Mingrelian has historically been only a regional language within the boundaries of historical Georgian states and then modern Georgia, and the number of younger people speaking it has decreased substantially, with UNESCO designating it as a "definitely endangered language".
Svan is a Kartvelian language spoken in the western Georgian region of Svaneti primarily by the Svan people. With its speakers variously estimated to be between 30,000 and 80,000, the UNESCO designates Svan as a "definitely endangered language". It is of particular interest because it has retained many features that have been lost in the other Kartvelian languages.
Tabal was a Luwian speaking Neo-Hittite kingdom of South Central Anatolia during the Iron Age. According to archaeologist Kurt Bittel, references to Tabal first appeared after the collapse of the Hittite Empire. Tabal was likely an exonym applied by the Assyrians to Cappadocia. While its native name is uncertain, it is possible that it was called Sura, as mentioned in the records of Yariri, ruler of Carchemish.
The Mingrelians are an indigenous Kartvelian-speaking ethnic subgroup of Georgians that mostly live in the Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti region of Georgia. They also live in considerable numbers in Abkhazia and Tbilisi. In the pre-1930 Soviet census, the Mingrelians were afforded their own ethnic group category, alongside many other ethnic subgroups of Georgians.
The Dvals were a ethnographic group of Georgians and Ossetians, their lands lying on both sides of the central Greater Caucasus mountains, somewhere between the Darial and Mamison gorges. This historic territory mostly covers the north of Kartli, parts of the Racha and Khevi regions in Georgia and south of Ossetia in Russia.
The prehistory of Georgia is the period between the first human habitation of the territory of modern-day nation of Georgia and the time when Assyrian and Urartian, and more firmly, the Classical accounts, brought the proto-Georgian tribes into the scope of recorded history.
The Proto-Kartvelian language, or Common Kartvelian, is the linguistic reconstruction of the common ancestor of the Kartvelian languages, which was spoken by the ancestors of the modern Kartvelian peoples. The existence of such a language is widely accepted by specialists in linguistics, who have reconstructed a broad outline of the language by comparing the existing Kartvelian languages against each other. Several linguists, namely, Gerhard Deeters and Georgy Klimov have also reconstructed a lower-level proto-language called Proto-Karto-Zan or Proto-Georgian-Zan, which is the ancestor of Karto-Zan languages.
The Kartvelian languages are a language family indigenous to the South Caucasus and spoken primarily in Georgia. There are approximately 5.2 million Kartvelian speakers worldwide, with large groups in Russia, Iran, the United States, the European Union, Israel, and northeastern Turkey. The Kartvelian family has no known relation to any other language family, making it one of the world's primary language families.
The Zan languages, or Zanuri or Colchidian, are a branch of the Kartvelian languages constituted by the Mingrelian and Laz languages. The grouping is disputed as some Georgian linguists consider the two to form a dialect continuum of one Zan language. This is often challenged on the most commonly applied criteria of mutual intelligibility when determining borders between languages, as Mingrelian and Laz are only partially mutually intelligible, though speakers of one language can recognize a sizable amount of vocabulary of the other, primarily due to semantic loans, lexical loans and other areal features resulting from geographical proximity and historical close contact common for dialect continuums.
Laz is a South Caucasian language. It is sometimes considered as a southern dialect of Zan languages, the northern dialect being the Mingrelian language.
Mingrelian is a Kartvelian language that is mainly spoken in the Western Georgian regions Samegrelo and Abkhazia. In Abkhazia the number of Mingrelian speakers declined dramatically in the 1990s as a result of heavy ethnic cleansing of ethnic Georgians, the overwhelming majority of which were Mingrelians.
The Sanigs were a tribe inhabiting Western Georgian/Abkhazia during antiquity. Their ethnic identity is obscure and is the subject of a controversy. They are first attested in the works of Pliny, Arrian and Memnon of Heraclea. Some scholars consider them to be Zans, while others maintain that they were proto-Svans. There is also a consideration that they may have been somewhat similar to the Zygii tribe. According to Arrian, they inhabited the area around Sebastopolis. In favour of the Sanigs' Kartvelian origin, it is important to mention some modern Georgian surnames such as: Sanikidze, Sanikiani, Sanigiani, Sanaia.
The Zans or Chans are a subethnic group of Kartvelian people, speaking the Zan languages.
The Karto-Zan languages, also known as Georgian-Zan, are a branch of the Kartvelian language family that contains the Georgian and Zan languages. The Svan language forms the other branch of the Kartvelian family, showing characteristic differences from the Karto-Zan group. It has been hypothesized that the divergence between Svan and Proto-Kartvelian goes back as far as the 19th century BCE. Georgian and Zan on the other hand diversified from Proto-Georgian-Zan during the 7th century BCE. Both languages share common archaic words related to metallurgy and agriculture absent in Svan.
References
- ↑ Klimov, Georgij A. (1998-12-31). Etymological Dictionary of the Kartvelian Languages. doi:10.1515/9783110806618. ISBN 978-3-11-015658-4.
- ↑ Linguistics. Mouton. 1999.
- ↑ Soviet Anthropology and Archaeology: ISAP Translations from Original Soviet Sources. International Arts and Sciences Press. 1965.
 | This Georgia-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
 | This article about historical linguistics is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
 | This language-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |