Practical Orthography of Chamalal Kristian Roncero

Home , Cyrillic (Unicode block), Palochka

Practical orthography of Chamalal Kristian Roncero

PRACTICAL ORTHOGRAPHY OF CHAMALAL

Kristian Roncero, SHH-MPI & FSU-Jena

Chamalal is an Avaro-Andic language (Nakh-Dagestanian, Russia), which is considered unwritten. In this document, I explain the background and reasons considered when developing the working orthography for this project on Chamalal language and culture documentation. First, I provide some background of the sociolinguistic situation and the previous works on Chamalal (§1). Second, I present the analysis of Chamalal’s phonological inventory I have reached so far (§2). Third, I summarise the principles or criteria followed for developing this orthography (§3). Then I introduce some of the problems for representation and how I have been trying to address them (§4). Finally, I present a summary of all the graphemes chosen, together with their IPA value and examples of words containing them (§5).

1. Background

Chamalal can be said to be an unwritten language (e.g. Magomedova (1999)). There has been hardly any material published, and most of the existing resources are linguistic materials. Bokarjov (1949) took Standard or Literary Avar conventions as a basis to transcribe Chamalal, with two additional diacritics, which I dicuss bellow.1

Magomedova has used several orthographic representations in her publications, but the most representative has been her Russian-Chamalal dictionary (1999), in which she used, what I found out later to be the “Officially Approved Orthography” for Chamalal (Zainab Alieva, p.c.), although I have not been able to find any other reference to it. I have given speakers several trials, but they all found it hard to read, besides the complications that it carries for typing in local devices and using it with Unicode-8 conventions.

1 Hereafter, whenever I use to Avar, I refer to Standard or Literary Avar. 1

Practical orthography of Chamalal Kristian Roncero

I have observed several young people who sometimes use Chamalal for texting. There is some variation from one speaker to another, but in general, they use most of the conventions for Standard Avar. Moreover, whenever I have asked other people in the village about a certain word, they all had strong spelling notions (particularly for the consonants that are absent in Russian) based on Avar as well.

2. Phonological inventory

2.1. Vowels

Chamalal distinguishes five vowels in terms of quality and there is a distinction between short (or simple) and long vowels. There is also phonemic contrast between oral and nasal vowels, although not all long vowels have a nasal counterpart, according to Alieva (2013).

Oral vowels Nasal vowels i, iː u, uː ĩ, ĩː ũ , ũ ː

e, eː o, oː ẽ Õ

a, aː ã , ã ː

Figure 1 Oral vowels Figure 2 Nasal vowels

2.2 Consonants

The representation of certain cross-linguistically very rare phonemes is still under revision, but in (Table 1) I represent the phonological inventory of consonantal sounds I have reconstructed so far.

Practical orthography of Chamalal Kristian Roncero

Table 1 Consonantal inventory of Chamalal

Bilabial Alveolar Postalveolar Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal /Palatal

lenis lenis lenis

fortis fortis fortis

voiced voiced voiced voiced voiced voiced voiced

voiceless voiceless voiceless voiceless

k Plossive p b t d̪ ɡ ɂ kʷ

Affricate ʦ ʧ ʤ χʼ

kʼ Ejective tʼ kʼː kʼʷ

Ejective affricate ʦʼ ʧʼ qχʼ

Ejective lat. tɬʼ

Nasal m n

Trill/Tap r/ɾ

x χ Fricative s sː z ʃ ʒ xː? χː ʁ ħ ʕ h xʷ χʷ

Lateral affricate tɬ

Lateral fricative ɬ ɬː

tɬʼ

Approximant j w

Lat approx. l

3. Principles for orthography

As Prof. Steven Marlett used to share in his lectures, “an orthography is a political agreement between the brain and the hand”. Admitting that we are dealing with a sensitive, and at the same time subjective issue, several commonly accepted criteria (in literacy/orthography development) have been considered in the developing of this working orthography:

-Primary language(s) of instruction and/or literacy in the region.

-Writing systems of other languages in the region.

-Ease for typing in local computers and devices. 3

Practical orthography of Chamalal Kristian Roncero

-Existing materials published in the language.

-Speakers’ preferences.

Based on speakers’ preferences, I have developed a working orthography on the basis of Standard or Literary Avar. Besides the fact that most Chamalal identify ethnically as Avar, Avar is also the genetically closest standardised language they are familiar with. Moreover, I have also consulted with Magomed Abdulmuslimov, who is the only non-academic (to my knowledge) who has published literature in Chamalal. He mentioned some of his objections to the orthography used in Magomedova’s work and pointed a few problems he was having with certain sounds (mostly nasalisation and long consonants) which I have tried to solve.

4. Problems

4.1. Nasalisation and vowel length

Standard Avar lacks several phonemes present in Chamalal (and other Avaro-Andic languages), which affects primarily the representation of vowels.

Bokarjov (1949) represented nasalisation with the diacrytic < ̃ > (circumflex) over Cyrillic (non- dyphtong) vowels; e.g. <а̃> for/ã /, or <у̃> for/ũ /. Besides the fact that speakers find it hard to understand, the main reason for rejecting Bokajov’s diacritic is that, unfortunately, so far The Unicode Standard, Version 12.1 (2019) has not developped any Cyrillic vowels with < ̃ > and so there is a risk that the combination of two scripts (Latin and Cyrillic) could cause formatting errors. In Magomedova’s work (1999) nasalisation is represented as a superscript Cyrillic /n/<н>; e.g. <гьунсIсI> /hũ sːʼ/ ‘honey’. This symbol is perhaps more transparent for native speakers. It can be problematic for typing using local devices, but luckily, now there is a Cyrillic Unicode symbol that could be used (Unicode hex. 1D78, Modifier Letter Cyrillic En <ᵸ>, is the best match). Notwithstanding the compatibility problems with the software for language documentation (which transforms <ᵸ> into a normal Cyrillic <н>), there are concerns regarding the Gigatlian variety (spoken in Gigatl’-Gigatl’ Urux). In Gigatlian there seems to be a tendency to resist the nasalisation process that other Chamalal varieties (as well as some Avaro-Andic languages) underwent; e.g. the noun /hã ː/ ‘village’ in the rest of varieties, is realised as /háːnì/ in Gigatl’.2 However, I have hardly work on this variety so I lack sufficient data to make any meaningful claim yet. Hence, in order to develop an inclusive orthography

2 My main language consultant and assistant, Zainab Alieva (a linguist, as well as a Chamalal speaker), confirmed this observation. 4

Practical orthography of Chamalal Kristian Roncero for all Chamalal varieties, the final decision has been to represent nasal vowels as: VOWEL + <н> (/n/); e.g. /hã ː/ ‘village’ as <гьан>, and let the speakers infer the nasalisation. This also has the advantage of simplifying the glossing task. Such solution is not exempts of problems. First, when I asked different speakers in Nizhnye Gakvari, not all of them felt the need to represent the nasal at all in the orthography. Second, I have identified a minimal pair which could also cause (ambiguity) problems with other contexts in which an oral vowel is followed by a nasal, but the vowel is not nasalised; cf. /hã / ‘village’ and /han/ ‘nutshell’.

When it comes to vowel lenght, both Bokarjov (1949) and Magomedova (1999) used a macron < ̄> (Unicode hex. 0304) over the Cyrillic vowel; i.e. <гьā н> /hã ː/ ‘smell, odour’. The advantages of this is that the nasalisation can be marked for the entire vowel (when it is a long vowel), but it could cause problems for representing acute and grave accents (particularly, for literacy materials), besides the complications for typing it and the opacity of the symbol for speakers. Instead, the simplest way of typing it is to simply duplicate the vowels in the representation; e.g. /aː/ > <аа>, as in <цӀаа> /tsʼaː/ ‘fire’. Magomedova also used the macron with fortis or geminate consonants, which in Literary Avar are represented by doubling the grapheme. Given that Chamalala speakers are used to this convention and considering all the above mentioned issues with the macron with vowels (which also apply to consonants), in our working orthography, geminated and/or long consonants are represented by doubling the grapheme or dygraph.

4.2. Diphthongs and palatalisation

Russian Cyrillic and Avar Cyrillic have dedicated graphemes for each diphthong headed by /j/; <я> for /ja/; <е> for /je/; <ё> for /jo/; and <ю> for /ju/. One of the problems resulting from this is that the grapheme <е> can represent several phonemes, most often /je/ and /e/, so in order to disambiguate this, the grapheme <э> could be used for /e/ and keep <е> for /je/. Yet, in order to get rid of some of the graphemes, while also contributing to some transparency, I suggested getting rid of the diphthong graphemes and representing them instead as <й> (i.e. /j/) + VOWEL; e.g. <йецӀ> or <йэцӀ> /jetsʼ/ ‘bread’.

I have not found any meaningful contrasts between palatalised and non-palatalised consonants (as in many Slavic languages), however, when I have interviewed some people, I have noticed they were imitating the rules of Russian (probably, under the pressure to “speak properly”). I have tried to represent this as faithfully as possible, as it may be that in the future someone has a better analysis. For those cases, when a consonant is palatalised I have represented it followed by a <й> (given that 5

Practical orthography of Chamalal Kristian Roncero in Russian, palatalisation is regressive). For example, the ABSOLUTIVE PLURAL of 'cow' ([ABS.SG] <зин>/zĩ/) is sometimes produced by some as [zinje], so I represent it as <зинйэ>. I am aware that using the soft sign <ь> may sound more appropriate in the Cyrillic alphabet; however, the soft sign is used as a digraph to represent many other consonants, and would make the reading unnecessarily more complicated.

4.3. Soft signs <ь>, hard signs <ъ> and “palochka” <Ӏ>.

Literary Avar, as well as Chamalal consonant inventory is much larger that Russians. In order to represent those additional phonemes Literary Avar orthography has integrated Russian Cyrillic’s soft <ь>, and hard signs <ъ>, which in Russian do not have any sound on themselves, but are used to mark palatalisation or its absence in a consonant. In addition to this, Literary Avar also created a new symbol, commonly known as “palochka” (04CF, 04C0 cyrillic letter palochka <Ӏ>),3 representing glottal or glottalised consonants (i.e. ejectives); e.g. <чӏ> /ʧʼ/ . All Chamalal speakers that I asked where very aware of the differences between the three combinatory digraphs and felt natural using them to represent Chamalal.

4.4. Stress (acute and grave)

Not representing in common writting (as in Russian and Avar), although it will be represented in the literacy materials, or in linguistic publications when relevant (e.g. for an inflectional paradigm).

5. Summary of the orthographic conventions

Having considered all the above difficulties, orthographic conventions and speakers’ preferences, we have decided to represent Chamalal phonemes the following way for the working orthography. The cells in blue, indicate questionable phonemes, probably unnecessary.

3 I have never seen anybody respecting the difference between small and capital palochka, in fact, many people use Latin Capital , the number <1>, or the exclamation mark to type it. 6

Practical orthography of Chamalal Kristian Roncero

5.1. Vowels & dyphtongs

Chamalal IPA Example а /a/ а /a/ ‘ear of corn’ аа /aː/ аа/aː/ ‘broth’ aн /ã / гьан /hã / ‘village’ аан /ã ː/ гьаан /hã ː/ ‘steam; odour’ и /i/ иха/iχa/ ‘sheep’ ии /iː/ [n.d.] ин /ĩ/ гьинцӏа/hĩʦ'a/ ‘stone’ иин /ĩː/ [n.d.]4 о /o/ ола /ola/ ‘cable’ оо /oː/ гьооб /hoːb/ ‘good’ он /õ / [n.d.] у /u/ нур /nur/‘rainbow’ уу /uː/ пуула /puːla/‘to blow up’ (Mag. 1999) ун /ũ / унча /ũtʃa/ ‘chicken’ (in Mag. (1999) the vowel is long) уун /ũ ː/ “” (vid. унча) э /e/ эдаб /edab/ ‘hammer’ ээ /eː/ ээ /eː/ ‘blood’ эн /ẽ / сэнкъалӏ /sẽ qχʼal/ ‘once’ 5.2. Consonants

Chamalal IPA Example б /b/ бал /bal/ ‘garlic’ в /v/ ·вац /vats/ ‘brother’ /w/ when preceded by a ·ссинв /sːĩw/ ‘milk’ homosyllabic consonant г /g/ галъ /gaɬ/ ‘hat; cap’ гъ /ʁ/ гъогъма /ʁoʁma / ‘river’

гь /h/ гьооб /hoob/ ‘good [III]’ гӏ /ʕ/ гӏагаралъи /ʕagaraɬi/ ‘family’ [MAG.1999 “родня"] д /d/ додра /dodra/ ‘waterfall’

4 Alieva (2013) said that /ĩː/ and /ũ ː/ are rare and was not sure they existed on their own. 7

Practical orthography of Chamalal Kristian Roncero

Chamalal IPA Example дж /ʤ/ джиджин / ʤiˈʤĩ /‘flower’ ж /ʒ/ жуж /ʒuʒ/ ‘ant’ з /z/ зин /zĩ/ ‘cow’ й /j/ йахад /jaχad/ ‘then’ к /kʰ/ кочул /koʧul/ ‘lip’ кв /kʷ/ квар /kʷar/ ‘rope’ къ /χʼ/ or/q͡χʼ/ къункъ/qχʼũ qχː/ ‘frog’ кь /t͡ɬʼ/ кьод / tɬʼod/ ‘mountain’ кӏ /kʼ/ кӏач /kʼaʧ/ ‘shirt’ кӏкӏ /kːʼ/ кӏкӏара/ kːʼara /‘mosquito’ [MAG. 1999] кӏв /kʷʼ/ макӏва /ˈmakʷʼa ‘chair’ [cf. макӏа ‘area, territory’] л /l/ лай /laj/ ‘blueberry’ лъ /ɬ/ лъецӏил /ɬeʦʼil/ ‘finger’ лълъ /ɬː/ лълъин /ɬːĩ/ ‘water’5(depending on variety) билълъала!

/biɬːala/ ‘dip! [IMPERATIVE]’ лӏ ͡tɬ лӏилӏ /tɬitɬ/ ‘butter; oil’ м /m/ май/maj/ ‘nose’ н /n/ нур/nur/ ‘rainbow’ п /pʰ/ пиян /pijã / ‘bee’ р рокьи /rotɬːʼi/ ‘love’ /r/ or /ɾ/

с /s/ сал /sal/ ‘tooth’ сс /sː/ ссинв /sːĩw/ ‘milk’ сӏсӏ /sːʼ/ сӏсӏалдаала / sːʼaldaːla/ ‘to teach, to instruct’ т /tʰ/ тай /taj/ ‘pony’ тӏ /tʼ/ тӏунтӏ/tʼũ tʼ/ ‘fly’ ф /f/ [for loandwords]6 фургун/furgun/ ‘lorry, van’ х /χ/ хими/χimi/ ‘bag; sack’ хх /χː/ ххол /χːol/ ‘tolokno’

5 Most if not all the speakers in N. Gakvari produced this form with a single consonant /ɬĩ/ and there are hardly any examples with this double consonant in Magomedova’s (1999) dictionary. I also found disagreements within speakers from V. Gakvari. 6 Older people pronounce /f/ as [p]. 8

Practical orthography of Chamalal Kristian Roncero

Chamalal IPA Example хъ /xʼ/ or /qχ/ хъал /qχal/ ‘skin’ хь /x/ хьул ‘desire; hope’ хӏ /ħ/ хӀалтӀи /ħaltʼi/ ‘(physical) work, task’. ц /ʦ/ цибакъ /tsibatɬʼ/ ‘weat’ цц /tsː/ [No entries in Mag (1999)] цӏ /tsʼ/ цӏа /tsʼа/ ‘star’ цӏцӏ /tsːʼ/ цӏцӏа/tsʼːаː/ ‘fire’ ч /ʧ/ чанта /ʧanta/ ‘pocket’ чӏ /ʧʼ/ чӏэтӏа /ʧʼetʼa/ ‘cat’ чӏчӏ /ʧːʼ/7 ш /ʃ/ шал /ʃal/ ‘wool’ щ /ʃː/ ъ ·/ʔ/ ·Soundless when part of a dygraph Ь ·Soundless, only part of dygraphs.

6. Acknowledgments and thanks

I would like to thank all the Chamalal speakers, in particular to Khadižat and Fatima Gazimagomedova as well as Magomed and Magomedzakir Abdulmuslimov for their patience, enthusiasm and useful input. It is also necessary to thank ELDP for their generosity, which has made possible to carry out this project (IPF0289). Many thanks to Tatiana Reid for her acute ear and comments, and of course, I should thank the MPI-SHH for hosting this project, as well as Diana Forker for agreeing to supervise it and provide useful feedback.

7 The only form I have been able to identify is the verb бичӏчӏдаала ‘to understand; to explain’ and derived forms in Magomedova’s (1999) dictionary. I have not found the form in my own corpus. 9

Practical orthography of Chamalal Kristian Roncero

7. References

ALIEVA, Z.M., 2013. Xarakteristika statistiki i distribucii nazalizovannyx glasnyx čamalisnkogo jazyka. [Description of Statistics and Distribution of Vowels of the Chamali Language]. Gumanitarny vektor, 36(4), pp. 187-194.

BOKAREV, A.A., 1949. Očerk grammatiki čamalinskogo jazyka. Moscow: Akademija nauk SSSR.

MAGOMEDOVA, P.T., ed, 1999. Čamalinsko-russkij slovar’. Makhachkala: Dagestanskij Naučnyj Centr RAN.