Talk:Abkhaz language

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From other pages on the internet, it looks as if a second part of the native name (бызшәа) of this language has been skipped: [1], [2], [3]. However I also found one page using one word: [4]. Anyone know something about this, comments? --Dittaeva 17:38, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I put it in there, I must have goofed, sorry. Feel free to put the second word in there. Just remember to make it into Unicode entity codes for people that have problems with Cyrillic. (Yes, I do see the difference between aṗsua and aṗsua byzš˚a, don't try to tell me I have seeing problems.) Wikiacc 20:36, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The second part (бызшәа) is just the Abkhazian word for "language"; either form is OK. :) thefamouseccles 04:55, 02 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Classification 2 Word order? 3 Abkhaz Language Link to the Georgian 4 Cyrillics in Wikipedia 5 Edit war with bots?

[edit] Classification

I removed Dene-Caucasian from the genetic classification part of the table and instead moved mention of it to the body of the article; Dene-Caucasian is an unproven and controversial hypothesis and the basic description of the language should reflect current mainstream opinion. The former 67.101.96.244: Ergative rlt 00:47, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you are completely right. It was added by Nixer, who believes that this fringe theory should be accepted as mainstream. --Gareth Hughes 11:43, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Word order?

Does anyone know the basic word order of Abkhaz?

Any word order is theoretically possible, but SOV is normal and unmarked in Abkhaz, as in all Northwest Caucasian languages. thefamouseccles 00:45, 18 Apr 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Abkhaz Language Link to the Georgian

The article mentions that "Sometimes North Caucasian languages and South Caucasian languages are grouped into the Caucasian languages, but these have not been shown conclusively to be related and are widely considered to be a geographically based convention." I'm not sure what is meant by this statement since it is not referenced in the text, but the North Caucasian language group is a sub-group, just like the South Caucasian language group, of a larger Ibero-Caucasian Language Family. It is commonly believed that both the North and South Caucasian language families have a common base. Getting back to the Abkhaz and Georgian language links which are not mentioned in this article at all, I would like to say that these languages do have a quite few things in common, and these similiraties can be noticed even by the untrained eye. For instance, -ba word bases and names beginning and ending with the letter a are common in both languages. Examples include words such as Ushba in Georgian (Svanetian) and Eshba in Abkhazian, or achadara in Abkhazian and ashkara (or ashkaraa) in Georgian. Abkhazian words such as Auadhara and Amtsakhara are strikingly similar to Georgian/Svan words such as Shkhara. This would seem to make sense since the Svan Language is generally considered as "Ancient Georgian" (or pre-modern Georgian), and if Abkhaz and Georgian languages are related and have a common base, the old Georgian (or Svanetian) word forms would have quite a few things in common with their Abkhaz counterparts. In addition, common one-word verb-noun conjugations in Georgian such as "sashualebaa" (means of doing something), "mogonebaa" (the remembrance of something) are very similar to a number of Abkhazian words (hence the common -ba base and the use of the "aa" ending). If there's a language expert that will be able to correct some of the specified misconceptions on the Abkhaz Language page, it would be very helpful. Otherwise, I have the information on the subject and will correct some of the abovementioned ambiguities within a week or two. D.Papuashvili 07:05, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I have to strongly disagree with this. First off, Svan isn't archaic Georgian any more than Frisian is archaic English. Svan is still spoken, which makes it just as modern as Georgian is (Svan has a lot of unusual sound changes, but those are most likely to be a recent innovation, not the original Proto-Kartvelian condition). Secondly, what you have to remember is that because the Abkhaz and Georgian languages have been in contact for so long, they have certainly been borrowing things from each other, and developing in parallel. However, that doesn't mean that they're related; and in fact, I strongly believe that they are not related, and that the Ibero-Caucasian language "family" is no more than an areal grouping, not a phylogenetic one. The morphology of Abkhaz is just too different from the morphology of Georgian. Yes, they're both agglutinative, and form very large one-word constructions; but so does Navajo, and Zulu, and Yanyuwa. You mentioned the word ending -ba, which is found on many Georgian nouns; however, in Abkhaz that ending is usually found on family names, not on ordinary nouns. Anyway, I can't explain everything in one comment, so if you would like to talk more about this issue, feel free to leave a note on my user talk page. Thefamouseccles 13:16, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Dear Thefamouseccles, thank you for your comments and for replying promptly. I have to disagree with you as well. The Svan language is widely considered a pre-modern form of Georgian due to Svaneti's isolation from the rest of Georgia (and the world for that matter:)). Unlike modern Georgian, the influence of other languages on Svanetian was greatly diminished due to Svaneti's location, and the language was able to maintain a large number old Georgian words (and even letters) that were simply lost or modified in the lowland areas. This is also true in the mountainous regions of Khevsureti and Tusheti, but to a lesser extent. The abovementioned factors caused the Svan language to evolve at a considerably slower pace than the rest of Georgian and Migrelian. All I'm saying is that the Abkhaz and Georgian languages have a common base, an Ibero-Caucasian language base, which may not make the languages "closely-related" by any means, but still makes them related. After I posted my comments yesterday, I looked at the references which were used on this page (such as Chirikba and Hewitt). I'm surprised that Dimitri (Damtyr) Gulia (faculty member of TSU was not used as well:). These references do not represent the full (or professional) picture and are more like a separatist-sponsored promotional site:). By separatism, I'm referring to Abkhaz separatism which was advocated and endorsed by the official (Soviet) Moscow (just like in many other parts of Georgia such as Mingrelia, South Ossetia, Ajaria, Imeretia, etc.) and not the large majority of the Abkhaz themselves. Anyway, getting back to the topic, other, older scholarly sources about Ibero-Caucasian links should be included on this page to make this article as balanced and representative, as possible. Thanks again for posting your comments. D.Papuashvili 14:43, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Not a problem, D.Papuashvili; I enjoy talking about the languages of the Caucasus. Now, I'm not saying that Svan doesn't preserve some more archaic features of Proto-Kartvelian, but calling it an archaic form of Georgian is a problem because Svan is not mutually intelligible with Georgian. They may have both sprung from the same proto-language, but calling that proto-language "Georgian" is misleading, and implies that Svan is still understandable by Georgian-speakers and vice versa.

As for the Abkhaz-Georgian issue, I really don't think it's an Abkhazian separatist issue at all. (Hewitt's and Chirikba's sources are present on the page simply because they are the most comprehensive Abkhaz grammars written in English - since this is the English Wikipedia, not everyone here reads Georgian. :) It is merely an issue of the modern comparative techniques used in linguistics. Ultimately, Georgian is South Caucasian and Abkhaz is North-West Caucasian; they are two different subgroups, even if one does accept the idea of the Ibero-Caucasian language family. To prove that the two groups are related, it isn't enough to say that Abkhaz shares many features with Georgian, because those features could come from the languages being in contact with each other; we must also be able to say that Svan shares many features with Kabardian, or that Mingrelian shares many features with Ubykh, and so on. It isn't enough to just find a series of words that look alike (read [5] for a good summary of why not); several linguists have tried to link North-West Caucasian with Basque by using that technique, but study of morphology does not support it. It is necessary to systematically prove that South Caucasian and North-West Caucasian share many cognates, and that the sound changes are regular - and current research simply does not show that. I have been working with Ubykh for six years, and while I have found a few possible South Caucasian loans (perhaps 10-15 words in a 3,000-word lexicon), I have found no evidence to suggest that there is any genetic connection with Georgian or with any other South Caucasian language. I also don't think it is helpful to consider old sources as more valuable than new ones; while they may be useful, the old ones often use outdated techniques and contain serious methodological flaws, like the old technique of comparing individual words, which is no longer considered a valid method in comparative linguistics. Could you provide me some references that support the Ibero-Caucasian hypothesis, so I can read some more about it? Thefamouseccles 04:38, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cyrillics in Wikipedia

A guideline on whether or not to italicize Cyrillics (and all scripts other than Latin) is being debated at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (text formatting)#Italics in Cyrillic and Greek characters. - - Evv 16:27, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edit war with bots?

It get's rather annoying to see Abkhaz language on my talk page every day, because bots add the Siberian-Russian interwiki link and other people keep removing it. Why is that? What's wrong with the Siberian article? Just being curious... — N-true 14:19, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

As the discussion on meta shows, a decision to close ru-sib would have been taken long ago had it not been for a massive sockpuppet and disruption campaign by its supporters. If the behavior of ru-sib's founder and principal contributor on meta is anything to judge by, assumptions of "good faith" are wasted on this project. The legitimacy of the "language" is not even what matters the most, it's the blatantly unencyclopedic content pointed out by the delete voters on meta that marks the whole wiki as simply not a good faith Wikipedia project. Under these circumstances, I think it is really not just a judgment on this particular stub being objectionable or not. Linking to it, from in between the other Wikipedias, implies an endorsement of the site as a legitimate Wikipedia project—which it isn't. And while I think the commitment to process shown by the meta admins is good (in prolonging the debate there), I really don't think we need to wait for its finalization to make this judgment. Khoikhoi 00:12, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I understand (I guess). I'm a strong opposer of dialect Wikipedias as well (and there are so many of them in German and Dutch dialects), that Siberian Wikipedia has been a thorn in my side as well — it seems to me like a playground; but on the other hand, I don't speak much Russian yet. But there should be better methods than reverting the bot edits every day. Would it help to contact the "creators"/"owners" of the bots so that they can program them not to add the Siberian interwiki link to this article? — N-true 02:30, 1 March 2007 (UTC)