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The Caucasian languages comprise a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.
Linguistic comparison allows the classification of these languages into several different language families, with little or no discernible affinity to each other. However, the languages of the Caucasus are sometimes mistakenly referred to as a family of languages. According to Asya Pereltsvaig, "grammatical differences between the three groups of languages are considerable. [...] These differences force the more conservative historical linguistics to treat the three language families of the Caucasus as unrelated." [1]
Three of these families have no current indigenous members outside the Caucasus, and are considered indigenous to the area. The term Caucasian languages is generally restricted to these families, which are spoken by about 11.2 million people.[ citation needed ]
The Northeast and Northwest Caucasian families are notable for their high number of consonant phonemes (inventories range up to the 80–84 consonants of Ubykh). The consonant inventories of the South Caucasian languages, however, are not nearly as extensive, ranging from 28 (Georgian) to 30 (Laz) – comparable to languages like Russian (up to 37 consonant phonemes, depending on definition), Arabic (28 phonemes), and Western European languages (often more than 20 phonemes).
The autochthonous languages of the Caucasus share some areal features, such as the presence of ejective consonants and a highly agglutinative structure, and, with the sole exception of Mingrelian, all of them exhibit a greater or lesser degree of ergativity. Many of these features are shared with other languages that have been in the Caucasus for a long time, such as Ossetian (which has ejective sounds but no ergativity).
Since the birth of comparative linguistics in the 19th century, scholars have attempted to relate them to each other or to languages outside the Caucasus region. The most promising proposals are connections between the Northeast and Northwest Caucasian families and each other or with languages formerly spoken in Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia.
Linguists such as Sergei Starostin see the Northeast (Nakh-Dagestanian) and Northwest (Abkhaz–Adyghe) families as related and propose uniting them in a single North Caucasian family, sometimes called Caucasic or simply Caucasian. This theory excludes the South Caucasian languages, thereby proposing two indigenous language families. While these two families share many similarities, their morphological structure, with many morphemes consisting of a single consonant, make comparison between them unusually difficult, and it has not been possible to establish a genetic relationship with any certainty.
There are no known affinities between the South Caucasian and North Caucasian families. Nevertheless, some scholars have proposed the single name Ibero-Caucasian for all the Caucasian language families, North and South, in an attempt to unify the Caucasian languages under one family.
Some linguists have claimed affinities between the Northwest Caucasian (Circassian) family and the extinct Hattic language of central Anatolia. See the article on Northwest Caucasian languages for details.
Alarodian is a proposed connection between Northeast Caucasian and the extinct Hurro-Urartian languages of Anatolia.
Linguists such as Sergei Starostin have proposed a Dené–Caucasian macrofamily, which includes the North Caucasian languages together with Basque, Burushaski, Na-Dené, Sino-Tibetan, and Yeniseian. This proposal is rejected by most linguists.
Other languages historically and currently spoken in the Caucasus area can be placed into families with a much wider geographical distribution.
The predominant Indo-European language in the Caucasus is Armenian, spoken by the Armenians (circa 6.7 million speakers). The Ossetians, speaking the Ossetian language, form another group of around 700,000 speakers. Other Indo-European languages spoken in the Caucasus include Greek (Pontic Greek), Persian (including Tat Persian), Kurdish, Talysh, Judeo-Tat, and the Slavic languages, such as Russian and Ukrainian, whose speakers number over a third of the total population of the Caucasus.
Two dialects of Neo-Aramaic are spoken in the Caucasus: Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, with around 30,000 speakers, and Bohtan Neo-Aramaic, with around 1,000 speakers. Both of these were brought to the Caucasus by ethnic Assyrians fleeing the Sayfo or Assyrian genocide during World War I.
A dialect of Arabic known as Shirvani Arabic was spoken natively in parts of Azerbaijan and Dagestan throughout medieval times until the early 20th century. [2] [3] In the nineteenth century, it was considered that the best literary Arabic was spoken in the mountains of Dagestan. [4]
Several Turkic languages are spoken in the Caucasus. Of these, Azerbaijani is predominant, with around 9 million speakers in Azerbaijan and more than 10 million in North Western Iran. Other Turkic languages spoken include Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Nogai, Turkish, Turkmen and Urum.
Kalmyk Oirat, spoken by descendants of Oirat-speakers from East Asia, is a Mongolic language.
Below are selected basic vocabulary items for all three language families of the Caucasus.
gloss | Proto-NE Caucasian [5] | Proto-NW Caucasian [6] | Proto-Kartvelian [7] | Georgian |
---|---|---|---|---|
eye | *(b)ul, *(b)al | *b-la | *twal- | tvali |
tooth | *cVl- | *ca | GZ *ḳb-il- | k’bili |
tongue | *maʒ-i | *bza | *nena- | ena |
hand, arm | *kV, *kol- | *q’a | *qe- | xeli |
back (of body) | *=uqq’ | *pxá | zurgi | |
heart | *rVk’u / *Vrk’u | *g°ə | *gul- | guli |
meat | *(CV)=(lV)ƛƛ’ | *Lə | GZ *qorc- | xorci |
sun | *bVrVg | *dəɣa | *mz₁e- | mze |
moon | *baʒVr / *buʒVr | *məʒa | *tute- | mtvare |
earth | *(l)ončči | *č’ə-g°ə (P-Circassian) | dedamiʦ’a | |
water | *ɬɬin | *psə (P-Circassian) | GZ *c̣q̣a- | ʦ’q’ali |
fire | *c’ar(i), *c’ad(i) | *məć’°a | GZ *ʓec₁xl- | cecxli; xanʒari |
ashes | *rV=uqq’ / *rV=uƛƛ’ | *tq°a | *ṭuṭa- | perpli |
road | *=eqq’ / *=aqq’ | *məʕ°á | GZ *gza- | gza |
name | *cc’Vr, *cc’Vri | *(p’)c’a | *ʓ₁ax-e- | saxeli; gvari |
kill | *=Vƛ’ | *ƛ’ə́ | k’vla | |
burn | *=Vk’ | *ca; *bla/ə | *c₁x- | ʦ’va |
know | *(=)Vc’ | *ć’a | codna | |
black | *alč’i- (*ʕalč’i-) | *ć’°a | šavi | |
round | *goRg / *gog-R- | mrgvali | ||
dry | *=aqq’(u) / *=uqq’ | *ʕ°ə́ | *šwer-, *šwr- | mšrali |
thin | *(C)=uƛ’Vl- | *č’°a | GZ *ttx-el- | txeli |
what | *sti- | *sə-tʰə; *śə-da (P-Circassian) | *ma- | ra |
one | *cV (*cʕV ?) | *za | GZ *ert- | erti |
five | *(W)=ƛƛi / *ƛƛwi | *txᵒə | *xut- | xuti |
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Aramaic, Hebrew, and numerous other ancient and modern languages. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Malta, and in large immigrant and expatriate communities in North America, Europe, and Australasia. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history, who derived the name from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis.
The term Ibero-Caucasian was proposed by Georgian linguist Arnold Chikobava for the union of the three language families that are specific to the Caucasus, namely
The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes Pontic languages, is a family of languages spoken in the northwestern Caucasus region, chiefly in three Russian republics, the disputed territory of Abkhazia, Georgia, and Turkey, with smaller communities scattered throughout the Middle East.
The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or Vainakh-Daghestani, or sometimes Caspian languages, is a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and in Northern Azerbaijan as well as in Georgia and diaspora populations in Western Europe and the Middle East. According to Glottolog, there are currently 36 Nakh-Dagestanian languages.
The Nakh languages are a group of languages within Northeast Caucasian family, spoken chiefly by the Chechens and Ingush in the North Caucasus.
Asia is home to hundreds of languages comprising several families and some unrelated isolates. The most spoken language families on the continent include Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Japonic, Dravidian, Indo-European, Afroasiatic, Turkic, Sino-Tibetan, Kra–Dai and Koreanic. Many languages of Asia, such as Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, Syloti or Tamil, have a long history as a written language.
Ubykh or Päkhy is an extinct Northwest Caucasian language once spoken by the Ubykh people, a subgroup of Circassians who originally inhabited the eastern coast of the Black Sea before being deported en masse to the Ottoman Empire in the Circassian genocide.
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.
Hattic, or Hattian, was a non-Indo-European agglutinative language spoken by the Hattians in Asia Minor in the 2nd millennium BC. Scholars call the language "Hattic" to distinguish it from Hittite, the Indo-European language of the Hittite Empire. The Hittites referred to the language as "hattili". The name is doubtlessly related to the Assyrian and Egyptian designation of an area west of the Euphrates as "Land of the Hatti" (Khatti).
The Alarodian languages are a proposed language family that encompasses the Northeast Caucasian (Nakh–Dagestanian) languages and the extinct Hurro-Urartian languages.
The Hurro-Urartian languages are an extinct language family of the Ancient Near East, comprising only two known languages: Hurrian and Urartian.
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.
Bats is the endangered language of the Bats people, a North Caucasian minority group. It is part of the Nakh family of Northeast Caucasian languages. It had 2,500 to 3,000 speakers in 1975.
Ingush is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by about 500,000 people, known as the Ingush, across a region covering the Russian republics of Ingushetia and Chechnya.
Suret, also known as Assyrian refers to the varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) spoken by Christians, namely Assyrians. The various NENA dialects descend from Old Aramaic, the lingua franca in the later phase of the Assyrian Empire, which slowly displaced the East Semitic Akkadian language beginning around the 10th century BC. They have been further heavily influenced by Classical Syriac, the Middle Aramaic dialect of Edessa, after its adoption as an official liturgical language of the Syriac churches, but Suret is not a direct descendant of Classical Syriac.
The peoples of the Caucasus, or Caucasians, are a diverse group comprising more than 50 ethnic groups throughout the Caucasus.
The Dvals were a ethnographic group of Georgians. 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 pre-Indo-European languages are any of several ancient languages, not necessarily related to one another, that existed in Prehistoric Europe, Asia Minor, Ancient Iran and Southern Asia before the arrival of speakers of Indo-European languages. The oldest Indo-European language texts are Hittite and date from the 19th century BC in Kültepe, and while estimates vary widely, the spoken Indo-European languages are believed to have developed at the latest by the 3rd millennium BC. Thus, the pre-Indo-European languages must have developed earlier than or, in some cases, alongside the Indo-European languages that ultimately displaced almost all of them.
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.
Christian Urmi is the dialect of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic spoken by Assyrian Christians in Urmia, northwestern Iran.