Avar (, , "language of the mountains" or , , "Avar language"), also known as Avaric,
is a
Northeast Caucasian language of the
Avar–Andic subgroup that is spoken by
Avars, primarily in
Dagestan
Dagestan ( ; ; ), officially the Republic of Dagestan, is a republic of Russia situated in the North Caucasus of Eastern Europe, along the Caspian Sea. It is located north of the Greater Caucasus, and is a part of the North Caucasian Fede ...
. In 2010, there were approximately one million speakers in Dagestan and elsewhere in
Russia
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
.
Geographic distribution
It is spoken mainly in the western and southern parts of the Russian Caucasus republic of
Dagestan
Dagestan ( ; ; ), officially the Republic of Dagestan, is a republic of Russia situated in the North Caucasus of Eastern Europe, along the Caspian Sea. It is located north of the Greater Caucasus, and is a part of the North Caucasian Fede ...
, and the
Balaken,
Zaqatala regions of north-western
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a Boundaries between the continents, transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by ...
.
[ Some Avars live in other regions of Russia. There are also small communities of speakers living in the Russian republics of ]Chechnya
Chechnya, officially the Chechen Republic, is a Republics of Russia, republic of Russia. It is situated in the North Caucasus of Eastern Europe, between the Caspian Sea and Black Sea. The republic forms a part of the North Caucasian Federa ...
and Kalmykia
Kalmykia, officially the Republic of Kalmykia,; , ''Khalmg Tanghch'' is a republic of Russia, located in the Volga region of European Russia. The republic is part of the Southern Federal District, and borders Dagestan to the south and Stavr ...
; in Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States
Georgia may also refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Georgia (name), a list of pe ...
, Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...
, Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...
, Jordan
Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...
, and the Marmara Sea region of Turkey
Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...
. It is spoken by about 1,200,000 people worldwide. UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...
classifies Avar as vulnerable to extinction.
Status
It is one of six literary languages of Dagestan, where it is spoken not only by the Avar, but also serves as the language of communication between different ethnic and linguistic groups.
Dialects
Glottolog
''Glottolog'' is an open-access online bibliographic database of the world's languages. In addition to listing linguistic materials ( grammars, articles, dictionaries) describing individual languages, the database also contains the most up-to-d ...
lists 14 dialect
A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...
s of Avar, some of which correspond to the villages where they are spoken. The dialects are listed in alphabetical order based on their name in Glottolog:
* ( Antsukh / ''Анцух'')
* Andalal-Gxdatl
* Bacadin
* Batlux
* Hid
* Karax
* Kaxib
* Keleb
* Salatav
* Shulanin
* Untib
* Xunzax ( Khunzakh / ''Xунзах'')
* Zakataly
* Zaqatala
Phonology
There are competing analyses of the distinction transcribed in the table with the length sign . Length is part of the distinction, but so is articulatory strength, so they have been analyzed as fortis and lenis
In linguistics, ''fortis'' ( ; Latin for 'strong') and ''lenis'' (, ; Latin for 'weak'), sometimes identified with 'tense' and 'lax', are pronunciations of consonants with relatively greater and lesser energy, respectively. English has fortis ...
. The fortis affricates are long in the fricative part of the contour, e.g. (tss), not in the stop part as in geminate affricates in languages such as Japanese and Italian (tts). Laver (1994) analyzes e.g. as a two-segment affricate–fricative sequence [] ( = ).
Avar has five phonemic vowels: /a e i o u/.
Lexical accent
In Avar, accent is contrastive, free and mobile, independent of the Syllable weight, number of syllables in the word. Changes in lexical accent placement indicate different semantic meaning and grammatical meanings of a word:
* ~
* ~
Morphosyntax
Avar is an agglutinative
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglu ...
language, of SOV order.
Adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a clause, a preposition, or a sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or level of certainty by ...
s do not inflect, outside of inflection for noun class
In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some ...
in some adverbs of place: e.g. the in "inside" and "in front". Adverbs of place also distinguish locative
In grammar, the locative case ( ; abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. In languages using it, the locative case may perform a function which in English would be expressed with such prepositions as "in", "on", "at", and " ...
, allative, and ablative forms suffixally, such as "inside", "to the inside", and "from the inside". is an emphatic suffix taken by underived adjectives.
Writing systems
There were some attempts to write the Avar language in the Georgian alphabet
The Georgian scripts are the three writing systems used to write the Georgian language: #Asomtavruli, Asomtavruli, #Nuskhuri, Nuskhuri and #Mkhedruli, Mkhedruli. Although the systems differ in appearance, their Letter (alphabet), letters share ...
as early as the 14th century.[Simon Crisp, "The Formation and Development of Literary Avar", pp. 143–62, in Isabelle T. Kreindler, ed., ''Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Soviet National Languages: Their Past, Present and Future'', Contributions to the Sociology of Language, 40 (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1985).] The use of the Perso-Arabic script
The Persian alphabet (), also known as the Perso-Arabic script, is the right-to-left script, right-to-left alphabet used for the Persian language. It is a variation of the Arabic script with four additional letters: (the sounds 'g', 'zh', ' ...
for representing Avar in marginal glosses began in the 15th century. The use of Arabic, which is known as ''ajam
(, ) is an Arabic word for a non-Arab, especially a Persian. It was historically used as a pejorative—figuratively ascribing muteness to those whose native language is not Arabic—during and after the Muslim conquest of Iran. Since the ea ...
'', is still known today.[
Peter von Uslar developed a Cyrillic-based alphabet, published in 1889, that also used some Georgian-based letters. Many of its letters have not been encoded in Unicode. The alphabet takes the following form: а б в г ӷ д е ж һ ]
і ј к қ
л м н о п ԛ
р с ҫ т ҭ у х х̓ хّ ц
ц̓ ꚑ ч ч̍ чّ
(ჭ)/ч̓ ш ղ ղ̓ ղᷱ ດ
As part of Soviet language re-education policies in 1928 the Ajam was replaced by a Latin alphabet, which in 1938 was in turn replaced by the current Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...
. Essentially, it is the Russian alphabet plus one additional letter called ''palochka
The palochka () is a letter in the Cyrillic script. The letter is usually caseless. It was introduced in the late 1930s as the Hindu-Arabic digit ' 1', and on Cyrillic keyboards, it is usually typeset as the Roman numeral ''. Unicode currentl ...
'' (''stick'', Ӏ), originally the digit 1 on a manual typewriter. The palochka is not included in common computer keyboard layout
A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard. Standard keybo ...
s, and is often replaced with a capital Latin letter i ( ''I'' ) or occasionally a small Latin letter L ( ''l'' ) rather than the digit ''1''.
Cyrillic alphabet
The Avar language is usually written in the Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...
. The letters of the alphabet are (with their pronunciation given below in IPA transcription):[Omniglot on the Avar alphabet, language and pronunciation](_blank)
/ref>
Latin alphabet
The Avar Latin alphabet was originally monocameral. Capital letters were added later. Note that there is no distinction between a cedilla as in and a straight tick as in ; the graphic forms of the letters vary by publication, and ''k'' may have a cedilla or ''t'' a tick.http://avar.me/
/ref>
Arabic alphabet
One feature of Avar Arabic alphabet is that similar to alphabets such as Uyghur and Kurdish, the script does not omit vowels and does not rely on diacritics
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
to represent vowels when need be. Instead, modified letters with dot placement and accents have been standardized to represent vowels. Thus, Avar Arabic script is no longer an "impure abjad
An abjad ( or abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving the vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels. The term was introd ...
" unlike its parent systems (Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
, Persian, and Ottoman), it now resembles a proper "alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...
".
While this was not the case for most of the several centuries during which Arabic alphabet has been used for Avar, this has become the case in the latest and most common conventions. This was indeed not the case at the time of writing of a linguistic article for the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1881.
As an example, in Avar Arabic Script, four varieties of the letter '' yāʼ'' ("ی") have been developed, each with a distinct function.
Nevertheless, Avar Arabic script does retain two diacritics.
First is "shadda
Shaddah ( , , also called by the verbal noun from the same root, tashdid ) is one of the diacritics used with the Arabic alphabet, indicating a geminated consonant. It is functionally equivalent to writing a consonant twice in the orthograp ...
" (ـّـ), used for gemination
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (; from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), or consonant lengthening, is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...
. While in Cyrillic, two back to back letters, including digraphs are written, in Arabic script, shadda is used.
Second diacritic in use in Avar Arabic script is ḍammah (ـُـ). In Arabic, Persian, and historically in Ottoman Turkish, this diacritic is used to represent or But in Avar, this diacritic is used for labialization
Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels invol ...
��ʷand not for any sort of vowel. So, it is the case that this diacritic is used in conjunction with a follow-up vowel. For example, the sound "зва" ʷais written as "زُا".
This diacritic can optionally be used in conjunction with shadda. For example, the sound "ссвa" ʷːais written as "سُّا".
If a word starts with a vowel, if it's an sound, it is written with ''alif'' "ا". Otherwise, the vowel needs to be preceded by a "vowel carrier", which is ''hamza-ya (ئـ). No need for such a carrier in the middle of words. Below table demonstrates vowels in Avar Arabic Script.
Sample comparison
Literature
The literary language is based on the болмацӏ (''bolmacʼ'')—''bo'' = "army" or "country", and ''macʼ'' = "language"—the common language used between speakers of different dialects and languages. The ''bolmacʼ'' in turn was mainly derived from the dialect of Khunzakh, the capital and cultural centre of the Avar region, with some influence from the southern dialects. Nowadays the literary language is influencing the dialects, levelling out their differences.
The most famous figure of modern Avar literature is Rasul Gamzatov (died November 3, 2003), the People's Poet of Dagestan. Translations of his works into Russian have gained him a wide audience all over the former Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
.
Sample sentences
Sample text
See also
* Northeast Caucasian languages
The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or Vainakh-Daghestani, or sometimes Caspian languages (from the Caspian Sea, in contrast to ''Pontic languages'' for the Northwest Caucasian languages), is a langu ...
* Languages of the Caucasus
The Caucasian languages comprise a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.
Linguistic comparison allows t ...
References
External links
RFE/RL North Caucasus Radio (also includes Chechen and Adyghe)
Avar language corpus
(in English, Russian, Polish and Belarusian)
Avar Cyrillic-Latin text and website converter
Online Avar–Russian dictionary, including Arabic and Latin scripts
{{Authority control
Agglutinative languages
Subject–object–verb languages
Languages written in Cyrillic script