Tevfik Esenç (; 1904 – 7 October 1992) was a Turkish citizen of Ubykh origin, known for being the last speaker of the

Ubykh language Ubykh is an extinct Northwest Caucasian language once spoken by the Ubykh people, an ethnic group of Circassian nation who originally inhabited the eastern coast of the Black Sea before being deported ''en masse'' to the Ottoman Empire during ...

. He was fluent in Ubykh, Adyghe and Turkish. After his death in 1992, the Ubykh language went extinct despite the efforts and work of numerous linguists to revive it. Nevertheless, Esenç is single-handedly responsible for the world's current knowledge of Ubykh language and culture being as extensive and detailed as it is.

Biography

Esenç was raised by his Ubykh-speaking grandparents for a time in the village of Hacıosman ( Ubykh: ''Lek'uaşüa /lɜkʷʼɐ́ɕʷɜ/''; Adyghe: ''Hundjahabl'') in Turkey, and he served a term as the ''muhtar'' (mayor) of that village, before receiving a post in the

civil service The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil service personnel hired rather than elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. A civil service offic ...

Istanbul Istanbul is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, constituting the country's economic, cultural, and historical heart. With Demographics of Istanbul, a population over , it is home to 18% of the Demographics ...

. There, he was able to do a great deal of work with the French

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

Georges Dumézil Georges Edmond Raoul Dumézil (4 March 189811 October 1986) was a French Philology, philologist, Linguistics, linguist, and religious studies scholar who specialized in comparative linguistics and comparative mythology, mythology. He was a prof ...

and his associate

Georges Charachidzé Georges Charachidzé (Giorgi Sharashidze; ka, გიორგი შარაშიძე) (February 11, 1930 – February 20, 2010) was a France, French-Georgia (country), Georgian scholar of the Caucasus, Caucasian cultures. His most import ...

to help record his language, although not all the writings of Charachidzé (1930–2010) have been published. Others who met Esenç and produced work on Ubykh are: the Norwegian Hans Vogt (1903–86); the Britis
George Hewitt
who made recordings with Esenç in Istanbul;the recordings are available
on the Net; his account of his meetings in 1974 has been published — 'Encountering Ubykh(s)’, in ''Arxeologija i ètnografija pontijsko-kavkazskogo regiona 5'', 195-204, 2016: Krasnodar; see also his 'The labialised sibilants of Ubykh (North West Caucasian)’, in ''Revue des Etudes Géorgiennes et Caucasiennes, 2'', 1986, 21-30) the Abkhazian

Viacheslav Chirikba Viacheslav Chirikba is a linguist and politician from Abkhazia. He was Minister for Foreign Affairs of Abkhazia between 2011 and 2016. Personal life Chirikba was born on 17 March 1959 in Gagra. From 1966 until 1976, he attended School No.5 in ...

, who has written on Ubykh settlements an
Ubykh surnames
and the Turkish linguist A. Sumru Özsoy. Having an excellent memory and understanding quickly the goals of Dumézil and the other linguists who came to visit him, he was a primary source of not only the Ubykh language, but also of the

mythology Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...

culture Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...

history, and customs of the Ubykh people. He spoke Turkish and Ubykh, and also a dialect of Adyghe (West Circassian), allowing some comparative work to be done between these two members of the Northwest Caucasian family. A purist, his

idiolect Idiolect is an individual's unique use of language, including speech. This unique usage encompasses vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. This differs from a dialect, a common set of linguistic characteristics shared among a group of people. Th ...

of Ubykh was considered by Dumézil as the closest thing to a standard "literary" Ubykh language that existed. He finished his work for Ubykh with the following speech to his long-time collaborator

: Esenç died in the night of 7 October 1992, at the age of 88; he was buried in the village cemetery of Hacıosman, his birthplace, alongside his wife Emine. He was survived by three sons and two daughters. In 1994, A. Sumru Özsoy organized an international conference, namely Conference on Northwest Caucasian Linguistics, at

Boğaziçi University Boğaziçi University (Turkish language, Turkish: ''Boğaziçi Üniversitesi''), also known as Bosphorus University, is a Public university, public research university in Istanbul, Turkey, historically tied to a former American educational insti ...

in memory of Dumézil and Esenç.

References

External links

55 audio recordings
of Tevfik Esenç speaking Ubykh, with transcriptions (

Pangloss collection The Pangloss Collection is a digital library whose objective is to store and facilitate access to audio recordings in endangered languages of the world. Developed by the LACITO centre of CNRS in Paris, the collection provides free online access ...

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...

, Paris) *
Account of the burial of the last speaker of Ubykh, Tevfik Esenç
from Lingoblog.dk
Trailer of “I had a dream — In the footsteps of the Last Ubykh”
– a 66' documentary (2019) on the life of Tevfik Esenç, produced by his granddaughter Burcu Esenç. {{DEFAULTSORT:Esenc, Tevfik 1904 births 1992 deaths People from Manyas Turkish people of Ubykh descent Last known speakers of a language Ubykh language Mayors of places in Turkey Politicians from Balikesir