Caucasian Language Family

Introduction

It is hard to believe that the Caucasus Mountains, a relatively narrow land bridge between the Black and the Caspian Seas, are home to one of the highest concentrations of languages in the world. Besides languages from Elbrus other language families (Armenian, Azerbaijani, Russian) brought by settlers and invaders over the past three millennia, there are 39 indigenous languages recognized as belonging to a single Caucasian family. Most of them have no relatives outside the Caucasus. All are believed to have been in the area for many thousands of years.

Djigit The puzzle of the isolated Caucasian language families has been attracting the attention of scholars since the 19th century. They have tried in vain to relate Caucasian languages to languages spoken outside the Caucasus area. They did succeed, however, in establishing links between the Northern Caucasian languages and extinct languages that were spoken in Anatolia, in present-day Goat Turkey, and Mesopotamia, in present-day Iraq.

Caucasian languages are usually grouped into geographically based groups. As you can see by the number of speakers, most of them are endangered, and some are heading for extincion. The population figures for many of these languages are based on old data, so that some of them may already be extinct.

North-central
Language	Population	Where spoken primarily	Additional links
Bats	2,500 to 3,000	Georgia	The Bats
Chechen	about 1 million	Chechnya	The Chechen language
Ingush	230,000	Ingushetia	The Ingush language
Northeast (The Naho-Dagestanian Group)
Akhvakh	5,000	Dagestan	The Akhvakhs
Andi	10,000	Dagestan	The Andis
Botlikh	3,500	Dagestan	The Botlikhs
Chamalal	5,500	Dagestan	The Chamalals
Ghodoberi	3,000	Dagestan	Dahgestan languages
Karata	6,000	Dagestan	The Karatas
Bagvalal	5,500	Dagestan	The Bagulals
Tindi	5,000	Dagestan	The Tindis
Avar	556,000	Dagestan	Avar Language
Dido	7,000	Dagestan	The Didos
Hinukh	200	Dagestan	The Hinuchs
Hunzib	2,000	Dagestan	The Hunzibs
Khvarshi	1,800	Dagestan	The Khvarshis
Dargwa	370,000	Dagestan	University of Graz
Lak	112,000	Dagestan	Minority languages of Russia
Aghul	19,000	Dagestan	The Aghuls
Archi	859	Dagestan	The Archis
Budukh	2,000	Azerbaijan	The Budukh
Khinalugh	1,500	Azerbaijan	University of Graz
Kryz	6,000	Azerbaijan	The Kryz
Lezgi	257,000	Dagestan	Lezgi language
Rutul	20,000	Dagestan	The Rutuls
Bezhta	3,000	Dagestan	The Bezhtas
Tabasaran	95,000	Dagestan	The Tabasaran
Tsakhur	13,000	Azerbaijan	The Tsahurs
Udi	4,200	Azerbaijan	The Udis
Northwest (Abkhazo-Adyghian group)
Abkhaz	105,000	Georgia	The Abkhaz
Abaza	45,000	Georgia	Abaza language
Adyghe	300,000	Georgia	Adyghe language
Kabardian	647,000	Russia	Kabardian language
South (Kartvelian group)
Georgian	4.1 million	Georgia	This website
Judeo-Georgian	40,000-50,000	Israel
Svan	40,000	Georgia	Svan language
Laz	33,000	Turkey	Laz language
Mingrelian	500,000	Georgia	Megrelian language

Circassian Caucasian languages are spoken by about 8.5 million people. Several of them are used as official languages in their respective autonomous replublics. There is danger that most of them, even larger ones like Chechen, will become household languages and then will completely yield to Russian. Even though many of these languages have sizable populations of fluent speakers, the combination of bilingualism in Russian, restrictions imposed by former Soviet government policies, and lack of educational and employment opportunities in these languages may signal the end of the road for many of them.

Structure

Sound System

Daghestan Rug Most Caucasian languages have a wealth of consonants including velar, uvular, pharyngeal, and glottal and ejective sounds. Uvular and pharyngeal sounds are present in Arabic, while glottal and ejective sounds can be found in some languages of Africa and in the native languages of North America. Ejectives are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a simultaneous closure of the vocal cords. They sound as though they are being spat out.

Caucasian languages also have an extensive vowel system that resembles that of Scandinavian languages. Svan, for instance, has 18 vowels.

Grammar

Noun phrase
Horse Nouns and pronouns are inflected for case. Some languages have up to 10 cases. The languages are said to be ergative. This means that the direct objects of transitive verbs appear in the nominative case, while the subjects are in an oblique case.

Verb phrase
Verbs are marked for tense, aspect, and occasionally for number. Some verbs agree in gender with the transitive object but not with the subject. A conjugated verb form may include prefixes related not just to the subject but also to the object.

Word order
Normal word order is Subject - Object - Verb.

Vocabulary

Lavra

There is abundant evidence of contact with neighboring languages such as Arabic and Persian. The most recentlexical influence has been that of Russian.

Writing

Ingush

Only Georgian has a written form that dates back to the 5th century. Several of the northern languages have scripts based on the Cyrillic alphabet.

Typical of some Caucasian languages is Adyge first written in 1918 with an alphabet based on the Arabic script. Since 1938, however, the language has been written with the Cyrillic script, as part of the russification campaign.

Resources

Click here to learn more about Georgian.

Language Study Resources for Caucasian Languages
UCLA Language Materials Project
Less Commonly Taught Languages Course Offerings
Minority languages of Russian on the Net
Ingush lexical database
Chechen, Ingush, and Kartvelian Dictionaries