Avar language
| Avar | |
|---|---|
|
Магӏарул мацӏ, Авар мацӏ Maharul macʼ, Awar macʼ | |
| Native to | Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Turkey |
| Ethnicity | Avars |
Native speakers | 760,000 (2010)[1] |
| Official status | |
Official language in |
 Dagestan (Russia) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 |
av |
| ISO 639-2 |
ava |
| ISO 639-3 |
Either: ava – Modern Avar oav – Old Avar |
Linguist list |
oav Old Avar |
| Glottolog |
avar1256[2] |
Avar (self-designation магӏарул мацӏ maharul macʼ [maʕarul mat͡sʼ] "language of the mountains" or Авар мацӏ awar macʼ [awar mat͡sʼ] "Avar language") is a language that belongs to the Avar–Andic group of the Northeast Caucasian family.
Geographic distribution
It is spoken mainly in the western and southern parts of the Russian Caucasus republic of Dagestan, and the Balaken, Zaqatala regions of north-western Azerbaijan.[1] Some Avars live in other regions of Russia. There are also small communities of speakers living in the Russian republics of Chechnya and Kalmykia; in Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Jordan, and the Marmara Sea region of Turkey. It is spoken by about 762,000 people worldwide. UNESCO classifies Avar as vulnerable to extinction.[3]
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 groups.
Dialects
There are two main dialect groups: the northern, which includes Khunzakh, Kazbek, Gunib, Gumbet and others; and the southern, which includes Andalal, Gidatl', Antsukh, Charoda, Tlyarata, Tsumada, Tsunta and others.
Morphology
Avar is an agglutinative language, of SOV order.
Adverbs do not inflect, outside of inflection for noun class in some adverbs of place: e.g. the /b/ in /ʒani-b/ "inside" and /t͡se-b-e/ "in front". Adverbs of place also distinguish locative, allative, and ablative forms suffixally, such as /ʒani-b/ "inside", /ʒani-b-e/ "to the inside", and /ʒani-sa/ "from the inside". /-go/ is an emphatic suffix taken by underived adjectives.
Phonology
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Radical | Glottal | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| central | lateral | ||||||||||||||
| lenis | fortis | lenis | fortis | lenis | fortis | lenis | fortis | lenis | fortis | ||||||
| Nasal | m | n | |||||||||||||
| Plosive | voiced | b | d | ɡ | |||||||||||
| voiceless | p | t | k | kː | ʔ | ||||||||||
| ejective | tʼ | kʼ | kːʼ | ||||||||||||
| Affricate | voiceless | t͡s | t͡sː | t͡ʃ | t͡ʃː | t͡ɬː | q͡χː | ||||||||
| ejective | t͡sʼ | t͡sːʼ | t͡ʃʼ | t͡ʃːʼ | (t͡ɬːʼ) | q͡χːʼ | |||||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | s | sː | ʃ | ʃː | ɬ | ɬː | x | xː | χ | χː | ʜ | |||
| voiced | v | z | ʒ | ʁ | ʢ | ɦ | |||||||||
| Trill | r | ||||||||||||||
| Approximant | l | j | |||||||||||||
- Note that the source names a radical series ″pharyngeal″ indiscriminately in all the tables, also when it includes a plosive and thus clearly isn't a true pharyngeal.
Writing system
The Avar language has been written since the 15th century, in the old Georgian alphabet. From the 17th century onwards it was written in an Arabic alphabet known as ajam, which is still known today. 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. Essentially, it is the Russian alphabet plus one additional letter called palochka (stick, Ӏ). As that letter cannot be typed with common keyboard layouts, it is often replaced with a capital Latin letter I, small Latin letter l or the digit 1.
Orthography
The Avar language is usually written in the Cyrillic script. The letters of the alphabet are (with their pronunciation given below in IPA transcription):[5]
| А а | Б б | В в | Г г | Гъ гъ | Гь гь | ГӀ гӏ | Д д |
| /a/ | /b/ | /w/ | /ɡ/ | /ʁ/ | /h/ | /ʕ/ | /d/ |
| Е е | Ё ё | Ж ж | З з | И и | Й й | К к | Къ къ |
| /e/, /je/ | /jo/ | /ʒ/ | /z/ | /i/ | /j/ | /k/ | /q͡χːʼ/ |
| Кь кь | КӀ кӏ | КӀкӏ кӏкӏ | Кк кк | Л л | ЛӀ лӏ | Лъ лъ | М м |
| /t͡ɬ’/ | /k’/ | /kːʼ/ | /kː/ | /l/ | /t͡ɬː/ | /ɬ/ | /m/ |
| Н н | О о | П п | Р р | С с | Т т | ТӀ тӏ | У у |
| /n/ | /o/ | /p/ | /r/ | /s/ | /t/ | /t’/ | /u/ |
| Ф ф | Х х | Хх хх | Хъ хъ | Хь хь | ХӀ хӏ | Ц ц | Цц цц |
| /f/ | /χ/ | /q͡χː/ | /x/ | /ħ/ | /t͡s/ | ||
| ЦӀ цӏ | ЦӀцӏ цӏцӏ | Ч ч | ЧӀ чӏ | ЧӀчӏ чӏчӏ | Ш ш | Щ щ | Ъ ъ |
| /t͡s’/ | /t͡ʃ/ | /t͡ʃ’/ | /ʃ/ | /ʃː/ | /ʔ/ | ||
| Ы ы | Ь ь | Э э | Ю ю | Я я | |||
| /ɨ/ | /e/ | /ju/ | /ja/ |
History
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.
Samples
| Hello! | Ворчӏами! | /wort͡ʃ’ami/ |
| How are you doing? | Щиб хӏaл бугеб? | /ʃːib ʜal bugeb/ |
| How are you? | Иш кин бугеб? | /iʃ kin bugeb/ |
| What is your name? | Дуда цӏар щиб? | /duda t͡s’ar ʃːib/ |
| How old are you? | Дур чан сон бугеб? | /dur t͡ʃan son bugeb/ |
| Where are you going? | Mун киве ина вугев? | /mun kiwe ina wugew/ |
| Sorry! | Тӏаса лъугьа! | /t’asa ɬuha/ |
| Where is the little boy going? | Киве гьитӏинав вас унев вугев? | /kiwe hit’inaw was unew wugew/ |
| The boy broke a bottle. | Васас шиша бекана. | /wasas ʃiʃa bekana/ |
| They are building the road. | Гьез нух бале (гьабулеб) буго. | /hez nuχ bale (habuleb) bugo/ |
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Modern Avar at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
Old Avar at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) - ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Avar". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- ↑ "UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger". UNESCO. Retrieved 19 April 2015.
- ↑ Consonant Systems of the North-East Caucasian Languages on TITUS DIDACTICA
- ↑ Omniglot on the Avar alphabet, language and pronunciation
External links
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Avaric edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
- 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
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