/ 5.1 The individual Janguages 5 Table j.l. Genetic classification of the Caucasian Janguages South Caucasian (Kartvelian) Georgian (Georgia� S.S.R. - 3,310,917) Svan (north-western Georgia - 43,000) Caucasian languages Mingrelian (Megrel) (Georgia - 360,000) Laz (Chan) (southern coast of Black Sea - 50,000) North-West Caucasian Abkhaz (Abkhaz A.S.S.R. - 79,835) Abaza (Karachay-Cherkes A.O. - 24.449) Adyge (West Circassian) (Adyge A.O. - 96,331) I 5. The individual languages and theirsubgrouping Kabard-Cherkes (East Circassian) (Kabard-Balkar A.S.S.R., Karachay-Cherkes A.O. - The great mountain range of the Caucasus. stretching for five hundred 311,078) miles from the Black Sea to the Caspian, is the traditional frontier between Europe Ubykh (Haci Osman Koyii, Turkey - ?) North-Central Caucasian (Nakh, Veynakh) and Asia. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, the area has been famous for its Chechen (Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R. - 604,655) multiplicity of languages, being described by an Arab geographer of the tenth Ingush (Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R. - 153.483) century as the 'mountain of tongues'. Many of the languages spoken in the area are Bats (northern Georgia - 3,000) Caucasian only in a geographic sense, for they belong either to the Indo·Europeanor North-East Caucasian (Oagestanian) Avar-Andi-Dido Turkic families. In this chapter we shall be concerned exclusively with those Avar (north-western zone of Dagestan highlands - 385,043) languages that belong to what, for all practical purposes, may be described as the Andi languages (to the west of the Avar region) indigenous languages of the region - in other words, with those languages which, Andi (9,000) Botlikh (3,000) from a strictly linguistic point ofview, may be styledCaucasian (or lbero-Caucasian, Godoberi (2,500) where the term Iberianrefers solely to the South Caucasian or Kartvelian groupand Karata (5,000) does not imply any connection with any language spoken in western Europe's Akhvakh (5,000) BagvaI (4,000) Iberian peninsula, specifically Basque). Tindi (5,000) One Caucasian language is no longer spoken in the Caucasus and is -virtually Chamalal (4,000) extinct in Turkey, where the entire Ubykh people migrated fo llowing the Russian Oido (Tsez) languages (immediately south of Andi) SUbjugation of the north-western Caucasus in 1864_ The present writer, on a visit to , Dido (7,000) Khvarsh (1,000) the Ubykh village ofHaci Osman Koyu in 1974, met only four elderly male speakers, Ginukh (200) one of whom, Fuat ErgUn. had seven children. all of whom could speak only Bezhti (Kapuch) (2,500) Circassian and Turkish. But, as Dumezil (1931: xii) observed. even before the Gunzib (600) Lak-Oargva (central zone of the Dagestan highlands) migration, Ubykh was losing ground to Circassian. The traditional homeland ofthe Lak (82,010) Laipeople, who speaka Kartvelian language, is the southern shore of the Black Sea Oargva (east of Lak - 227,3°2) in present-day Turkey, where there are �ome 50,000 speakers; only a very few Laz Lezgian (south-eastern zone of the Dagestan highlands) Archi (between Lak and Avar - 1,000) speakers are to be found within the U.S.S.R. - notably in the village ofSarpi on the Tabasaran (southern Dagestan - 54,574) Soviet-Turkish border (Asatiani 1974: 3-4). Otherwise, apart from various emigre Agul (southern Oagestan - 8,782) communities predominantly in Turkey and the Middle East, all the Caucasian Rutul (southern Oagestan - 11,933) Tsakhur (southern Oagestan, northern Azerbaydzhan - 10.719) languages are confined within the frontiers of the U.S.S.R. The 38 languages which Budukh (northern Azerbaydzhan - 1,000) thus form the object of this survey are listed in Table 5.1; added in parentheses after Khinalug (northern Az.erbaydzhan - 1,000) each language are the latest available figuresfor the speakers of the language and the Udi (northern Azerbaydzhan and the eastern Georgian village of Oktomberi - 4.000) general location where each is spoken. Lezgi (southern Dagestan, northern Azerbaydzhan - 304,087) Kryz (Kryts) (northern Azerbaydzhan - 6.000) 5. Ca ucasian languages 5.1 The individual languages 199 As many of these languages are spoken in only a few villages-in some cases, in one for both consonants and vowels. Thus, whilst Georgian enjoys the distinction of village only - it is not possible here to present a more precise demarcation of the possessing an exceedingly rich literary tradition spanning fifteen centuries, the locality of the speakers. The status of some of the languages listed is disputed - for heritage of the remaining eleven literatures really began, apart from a few earlier instan.f:e, within the U.S.S.R. Laz and Mingrelian are regarded as dialects of a single attempts in the nineteenth century, only in the Soviet period. Perhaps the oldest language, Zan. Also now viewed as dialects ofa single language are Tindi and Bagval attested examples of a Caucasian language other than Georgian are the bilingual (Gudava 1967: 351), and possibly also Botlikh and Godoberi (Cikobava 1974: 37)· inscriptions in A var and Georgian that have been discovered in Dagestan and dated, From a purely structural point of view one would have to treat Abazaas a (divergent) in some cases, to as early as the tenth-eleventh centuries (see Gamba�idze 1977). dialect of Abkhaz. a view enshrined in the very title ofLomtatidze'sdescription ofthe The present-day. post-Revolutionary orthographies are all based on Cyrillic. ' main Abaza dialect (1977): 'The Tapanta dialect of the Abkhaz language'. Kubachi Except in Abkhaz, only one non-Cyrillic sign is employed, and this is capital I, which, is sometimes considered a dialect of Dargva, sometimes a separate language. The depending on the language concerned, may signify a glottal stop, glottalic initiation, precise genetic affiliations of Archi and Khinalug are also not finally settled, some oreitherpharyngal or uvular articulation. As the Caucasian languages possess richer commentators preferring to consider them as language-isolates. consonantal (and, generally, vocalic) inventories than Russian, the result is that As regards the division into four main areal groups, it may be said that, within each certain phonemes have to be represented by means of digraphs, trigraphs, and, in one group. all the languages are clearly related (with the exception of the two just rare instance (the Kabard voiceless aspirated labialised uvular plosive) a tetragraph mentioned), but the relationships, if any, existing between the groups is far from KX'by. In different languages, moreover, the same sign may have different values: for clear. Whilst the majority of scholars insist on working with North-Central instance, the digraph Kb in Abaza is [k], but in Avar it is [kl']; and the same phone Caucasian and North-East Caucasian as separate language-families, others admit may be represented by different signs, e.g. [c;]is TW in Abaza but <{'binAdyge. But this the inclusion of the Nakh family into the North-East Caucasian group. so that there desire to endow each literary language with its own distinctive orthographic identity would then be a Nakh subgroup of North-East Caucasian on a par with the has resulted in the fo llowing absurd situation obtaining in the orthographies of such Lak-Dargva, Avar-Andi-Dido and Lezgian subgroups, and we would then have closely related languages as Adyge and Kabard: the palato-alveolar voiceless only three Caucasian families of North-West Caucasian, North-East Caucasian, fricative [s] in Adyge is wand in Kabard w, whilst w in Kabard represents the and South Caucasian. Although there is a basis for supposing a remote link between alveolo-palatal voiceless fr icative [5J. which in Adyge is written Wb. However, the all the languages of the northern Caucasus, there is as yet no sound evide.nce for strangest of the new orthographies incontrovertibly belongs to Abkhaz. Apart from assuming any genetic association between South Caucasian and these northern employing 14 characters unknown in Cyrillic, it is amazingly inconsistent in its groups. However, a number of Soviet scholars: particularly in Georgia, accept the marking of aspirates and ejectives. common origin of all the Caucasian languages as an article of fa ith, which has thus For a language to have literary status means that newspapers,journals, and books become the working hypothesis underlying their research. are published in it, and that it is the medium of instruction in the specifically non­ Twelve of the Caucasian languages have the status ofliterary languages within the Russian schools up to at least the age often, when lessons are conducted in Russian ­ U.S.S.R.: Georgian (own name Kartveli '(a) Georgian'), Abkhaz, Abaza, Adyge, the one exception being Georgian (as opposed to Russian) schools in Georgia, where Kabard-Cherkes, Chechen, Ingush, Avar, Lak, Dargva, Lezgi, and Tabasaran. Of one's entire education to the end of a university course may be exclusively in these. only Georgian has its own script of 33 characters (Old Georgian had 5 extra), Georgian (apart from Russian language lessons). This means that children born into the invention of which is ascribed to Mesrop in the early fifth century, who, in communities whose language is nonliterary will be bilingual (if not multilingual) by addition to being credited with the establishment of the Armenian orthography, is the age of ten - for example, Botlikh children are educated in Avar. The dialect also said to be the inventor of the long defunct script of the little known language of selected to form the basis of the literary language is usually the one which is the Caucasian Albanians, who may have been the linguistic ancestors of the present­ phonemically simplest -hence the choice of the southern Abzhuy dialect of Abkhaz, day Udi speakers.