Avar language
Encyclopedia
The modern Avar language (self-designation магӀарул мацӀ maharul macʼ [maʕarul mat͡sʼ] "language of the mountains" or Авар мацI awar macʼ [awar mat͡sʼ] "Avar language") belongs to the Avar–Andic group of the Northeast Caucasian
language family.
, and the Balaken, Zaqatala regions of north-western Azerbaijan
. 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 has more than 1,400,000 speakers worldwide.
, Cumada, Cunta and others.
. From the 17th century onwards it was written in a modified Arabic script
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 alphabet
. Essentially, it is the Russian alphabet plus one additional letter called palochka
(stick). As that letter cannot be typed with common keyboard layout
s, it is often replaced with a capital Latin letter I, small Latin letter l or the digit 1.
. The letters of the alphabet are (with their pronunciation given below in IPA transcription):
/t͡ɬː/ and /ɬ/ are also written ЛI лI, Лъ лъ respectively.
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
.
Northeast Caucasian languages
The Northeast Caucasian languages constitute a language family spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, northern Azerbaijan, and in northeastern Georgia, as well as in diaspora populations in Russia, Turkey, and the Middle East...
language family.
Geographic distribution
It is spoken mainly in the western and southern parts of the Russian Caucasus republic of DagestanDagestan
The Republic of Dagestan is a federal subject of Russia, located in the North Caucasus region. Its capital and the largest city is Makhachkala, located at the center of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea...
, and the Balaken, Zaqatala regions of north-western Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...
. Some Avars
Caucasian Avars
Avars or Caucasian Avars are a modern people of Caucasus, mainly of Dagestan, in which they are the predominant group. The Caucasian Avar language belongs to the Northeast Caucasian language family ....
live in other regions of Russia. There are also small communities of speakers living in the Russian republics of Chechnya
Chechnya
The Chechen Republic , commonly referred to as Chechnya , also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria , is a federal subject of Russia . It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny...
and Kalmykia
Kalmykia
The Republic of Kalmykia is a federal subject of Russia . Population: It is the only Buddhist region in Europe. It has also become well-known as an international chess mecca because its former President, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, is the head of the International Chess Federation .-Geography:*Area:...
; in Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
, Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
, and the Marmara Sea region of Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
. It has more than 1,400,000 speakers worldwide.
Official 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, TlyarataTlyarata
Tlyarata is a village and the administrative center of Tlyaratinsky District of the Republic of Dagestan, Russia, located in the south-western part of the republic in a mountainous area and within proximity to the border with Azerbaijan and Georgia. Population: It is the home of World champion...
, Cumada, Cunta and others.
Morphology
Avar is genderless agglutinative language, of SOV order.Consonants
| Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals... |
Dental | Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Uvular Uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and... |
Epi- glottal Epiglottal consonant An epiglottal consonant is a consonant that is articulated with the aryepiglottic folds against the epiglottis. They are occasionally called aryepiglottal consonants.-Epiglottal consonants in the IPA:... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| central | lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth.... |
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| lenis | fortis Fortis and lenis In linguistics, fortis and lenis are terms generally used to refer to groups of consonants that are produced with greater and lesser energy, respectively, such as in energy applied, articulation, etc.... |
lenis | fortis | lenis | fortis | lenis | fortis | lenis | fortis | ||||||
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
m | n | |||||||||||||
| Plosive | voiced Voice (phonetics) Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate... |
b | d | ɡ | |||||||||||
| voiceless Voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of... |
p | t | k | kː | ʔ | ||||||||||
| ejective Ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants... |
tʼ | kʼ | kːʼ | ||||||||||||
| Affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :... |
voiceless Voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of... |
t͡s | t͡sː | t͡ʃ | t͡ʃː | t͡ɬː | q͡χː | ||||||||
| ejective Ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants... |
t͡sʼ | t͡sːʼ | t͡ʃʼ | t͡ʃːʼ | (t͡ɬːʼ) | q͡χːʼ | |||||||||
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
voiceless Voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of... |
s | sː | ʃ | ʃː | ɬ | ɬː | x | xː | χ | χː | ʜ | |||
| voiced Voice (phonetics) Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate... |
v | z | ʒ | ʁ | ʢ | ɦ | |||||||||
| Trill Trill consonant In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular.... |
r | ||||||||||||||
| Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
l | j | |||||||||||||
- Note that the source names the epiglottalEpiglottal consonantAn epiglottal consonant is a consonant that is articulated with the aryepiglottic folds against the epiglottis. They are occasionally called aryepiglottal consonants.-Epiglottal consonants in the IPA:...
series ″pharyngealPharyngeal consonantA pharyngeal consonant is a type of consonant which is articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx.-Pharyngeal consonants in the IPA:Pharyngeal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet :...
″ 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 alphabetGeorgian alphabet
The Georgian alphabet is the writing system used to write the Georgian language and other Kartvelian languages , and occasionally other languages of the Caucasus such as Ossetic and Abkhaz during the 1940s...
. From the 17th century onwards it was written in a modified Arabic script
Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...
known as Ajam
Ajam
Ajam is a word used in Persian and Arabic literature but with different concepts. Ajam in Arabic has two primary meanings: "non-Arab" and "Persian".literally it has other meaning "one who is illiterate in language", "silent", or "mute", and refers to non-Arabs in general, or people of Southern...
, 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 alphabet
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
. Essentially, it is the Russian alphabet plus one additional letter called palochka
Palochka
Palochka is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. This letter usually has only a capital form, which is also used in lowercase text. The capital form of Palochka often looks like the capital form of the Cyrillic letter Dotted I , the capital form of the Latin letter I , and the lowercase form of the...
(stick). As that letter cannot be typed with common keyboard layout
Keyboard layout
A keyboard layout is any specific mechanical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key–meaning associations of a computer, typewriter, or other typographic keyboard....
s, 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 alphabetCyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
. The letters of the alphabet are (with their pronunciation given below in IPA transcription):
| А а | Б б | В в | Г г | Гъ гъ | Гь гь | ГI гI | 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/ | /qː’/ |
| Кь кь | КI кI | КIкI кIкI | Кк кк | Л л | М м | Н н | О о |
| /t͡ɬ’/ | /k’/ | /t͡ɬː/ | /ɬ/ | /l/ | /m/ | /n/ | /o/ |
| П п | Р р | С с | Т т | ТI тI | У у | Ф ф | Х х |
| /p/ | /r/ | /s/ | /t/ | /t’/ | /u/ | /f/ | /χ/ |
| Хх хх | Хъ хъ | Хь хь | ХI хI | Ц ц | Цц цц | ЦI цI | ЦIцI цIцI |
| /qː/ | /x/ | /ħ/ | /t͡s/ | /t͡s’/ | |||
| Ч ч | ЧI чI | ЧIчI чIчI | Ш ш | Щ щ | Ъ ъ | Ы ы | Ь ь |
| /t͡ʃ/ | /t͡ʃ’/ | /ʃ/ | /ʃː/ | /ʔ/ | /ɨ/ | ||
| Э э | Ю ю | Я я | |||||
| /e/ | /ju/ | /ja/ |
/t͡ɬː/ and /ɬ/ are also written ЛI лI, Лъ лъ respectively.
History
The literary language is based on the — bo = "army" or "country", and = "language" — the common language used between speakers of different dialects and languages. The 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
Rasul Gamzatov
Rasul Gamzatovich Gamzatov was probably the most famous poet writing in the Avar language. Among his poems was Zhuravli, which became a well-known Soviet song....
(died November 3, 2003), the People's Poet of Dagestan. Translations of his works into Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
have gained him a wide audience all over the former Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
Samples
| Hello! | ! | Vorçami! |
| How are you doing? | Щиб бугеб? | Şçib ha bugeb |
| How are you? | Иш кин бугеб? | İş kin bugeb? |
| What is your name? | Дуда щиб? | Duda tsar sçib? |
| How old are you? | Дур чан сон бугеб? | Dur çan son bugeb? |
| Where are you going? | Mун киве ина вугев? | Mun kive ina vugev? |
| Sorry! | лъугьа! | Tasa luga! |
| Where is the little boy going? | Киве вас унев вугев? | Kive git inav vas unev vugev |
| The boy broke a bottle. | Васас шиша бекана. | Wasas şişa bekana.. |
| They are building the road. | Гьез нух бале(гьабулеб) буго. | Ğez nuh bale(ğabuleb) bugo. |