''Die Päkhy-Sprache'' (which means ''The Ubykh Language'' in German) is the title of a treatise in the
Ubykh language
Ubykh or Päkhy was a Northwest Caucasian language once spoken by the Ubykh tribe of Circassians who originally lived along the eastern coast of the Black Sea before being deported ''en masse'' to Turkey in the Circassian genocide.
The Ubykh l ...
, written by
Gyula Mészáros and published in 1934 by the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
Press.
It was the first major descriptive work written in Ubykh. At the time of the treatise, the
phonological complexities of the language were not fully understood. The
transcription
Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds (voice, music etc.) into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including:
Genetics
* Transcription (biology), the copying of DNA into RNA, the fir ...
system used in the book was somewhat lacking, distinguishing only about 80% of Ubykh's 80-odd
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
s. Despite this shortcoming, Mészáros's account of the
grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...
was quite accurate. The quality and scope of the 402 page book drew much attention to this obscure language, paving the way for the further documentation of the Ubykh language by
Georges Dumézil
Georges Edmond Raoul Dumézil (4 March 189811 October 1986) was a French philologist, linguist, and religious studies scholar who specialized in comparative linguistics and mythology. He was a professor at Istanbul University, École pratique d ...
,
Hans Vogt and
Tevfik Esenç
Tevfik Esenç (1904 – 7 October 1992) was a Turkish citizen of Circassian origin, known for being the last speaker of the Ubykh language. He was fluent in Ubykh, Adyghe and Turkish. After his death in 1992, the Ubykh language went extinct ...
.
Linguistics books
Ubykh language
book-stub
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