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TheCaucasian languages comprise a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around theCaucasus Mountains, which lie between theBlack Sea and theCaspian Sea.
Linguistic comparison allows the classification of these languages into severallanguage families, with little or no discernible affinity to each other. However, the languages of the Caucasus are sometimes mistakenly referred to as afamily of languages.[1] According to Asya Pereltsvaig, "grammatical differences between the three groups of languages are considerable. [...] These differences force the more conservative historical linguistics to treat the three language families of the Caucasus as unrelated."[2]
| Caucasian | |
|---|---|
| (geographic) | |
| Geographic distribution | Caucasus |
| Linguistic classification | Not a single family |
| Subdivisions | |
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | None |
Three of these families have no current indigenous members outside the Caucasus, and are considered indigenous to the area. The termCaucasian languages is generally restricted to these families, which are spoken by about 11.2 million people.[3]
The Northeast and Northwest Caucasian families are notable for their high number ofconsonantphonemes (inventories range up to the 80–84 consonants ofUbykh). The consonant inventories of the South Caucasian languages, however, are not nearly as extensive, ranging from 28 (Georgian) to 32 (Svan) – comparable to languages likeRussian (up to 37 consonant phonemes, depending on definition),Arabic (28 phonemes), and Western European languages (often more than 20 phonemes).
The autochthonous languages of the Caucasus share someareal features, such as the presence ofejective consonants and a highlyagglutinative structure, and, with the sole exception ofMingrelian, all of them exhibit a greater or lesser degree ofergativity. Many of these features are shared with other languages that have been in the Caucasus for a long time, such asOssetian (which has ejective sounds but no ergativity).[1]
Since the birth of comparative linguistics in the 19th century, the riddle of the apparently isolated Caucasian language families has attracted the attention of many scholars, who have endeavored to relate them to each other or to languages outside the Caucasus region.[3][4] The most promising proposals are connections between the Northeast and Northwest Caucasian families and each other or with languages formerly spoken inAnatolia and northernMesopotamia.[4][5]
Linguists such asSergei Starostin see the Northeast (Nakh-Dagestanian) and Northwest (Abkhaz–Adyghe) families as related and propose uniting them in a singleNorth Caucasian family, sometimes calledCaucasic or simplyCaucasian. This theory excludes the South Caucasian languages, thereby proposing two indigenous language families.[6] While these two families share many similarities, their morphological structure, with manymorphemes consisting of a single consonant, make comparison between them unusually difficult, and it has not been possible to establish a genetic relationship with any certainty.[5]
There are no known affinities between the South Caucasian and North Caucasian families.[5] Nevertheless, some scholars have proposed the single nameIbero-Caucasian for all the Caucasian language families, North and South, in an attempt to unify the Caucasian languages under one family.
Some linguists have claimed affinities between the Northwest Caucasian (Circassian) family and the extinctHattic language of central Anatolia. See the article onNorthwest Caucasian languages for details.
Alarodian is a proposed connection between Northeast Caucasian and the extinctHurro-Urartian languages ofAnatolia.
Linguists such asSergei Starostin have proposed aDené–Caucasianmacrofamily, which includes the North Caucasian languages together withBasque,Burushaski,Na-Dené,Sino-Tibetan, andYeniseian. This proposal is rejected by most linguists.
Other languages historically and currently spoken in the Caucasus area can be placed into families with a much wider geographical distribution.
The predominantIndo-European language in the Caucasus isArmenian, spoken by theArmenians (circa 6.7 million speakers). The Ossetians, speaking theOssetian language, form another group of around 700,000 speakers. Other Indo-European languages spoken in the Caucasus includeGreek (Pontic Greek),Persian (includingTat Persian),Kurdish,Talysh,Judeo-Tat, and theSlavic languages, such asRussian andUkrainian, whose speakers number over a third of the total population of the Caucasus.
Two dialects ofNeo-Aramaic are spoken in the Caucasus:Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, with around 30,000 speakers, andBohtan Neo-Aramaic, with around 1,000 speakers. Both of these were brought to the Caucasus by ethnicAssyrians fleeing theSayfo or Assyrian genocide duringWorld War I.
A dialect ofArabic known asShirvani Arabic was spoken natively in parts ofAzerbaijan andDagestan throughout medieval times until the early 20th century.[7][8] In the nineteenth century, it was considered that the bestliterary Arabic was spoken in the mountains ofDagestan.[9]
SeveralTurkic languages are spoken in the Caucasus. Of these,Azerbaijani is predominant, with around 9 million speakers in Azerbaijan and more than 10 million in North Western Iran. Other Turkic languages spoken includeKarachay-Balkar,Kumyk,Nogai,Turkish,Turkmen andUrum.
Kalmyk Oirat, spoken by descendants ofOirat-speakers from East Asia, is aMongolic language.
Below are selected basic vocabulary items for all three language families of the Caucasus.
| gloss | Proto-NE Caucasian[10] | Proto-NW Caucasian[11] | Proto-Kartvelian[12] | Georgian |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| eye | *(b)ul, *(b)al | *b-la | *twal- | tvali |
| tooth | *cVl- | *ca | GZ*ḳb-il- | k’bili |
| tongue | *maʒ-i | *bza | *nena- | ena |
| hand, arm | *kV, *kol- | *q’a | *qe- | xeli |
| back (of body) | *-uqq’ | *pxá | zurgi | |
| heart | *rVk’u / *Vrk’u | *g°ə | *gul- | guli |
| meat | *(CV)-(lV)ƛƛ’ | *Lə | GZ*qorc- | xorci |
| sun | *bVrVg | *dəɣa | *mz₁e- | mze |
| moon | *baʒVr / *buʒVr | *məʒa | *tute- | mtvare |
| earth | *(l)ončči | *č’ə-g°ə (P-Circassian) | dedamiʦ’a | |
| water | *ɬɬin | *psə (P-Circassian) | GZ*c̣q̣a- | ʦ’q’ali |
| fire | *c’ar(i), *c’ad(i) | *məć’°a | GZ*ʓec₁xl- | cecxli; xanʒari |
| ashes | *rV-uqq’ / *rV-uƛƛ’ | *tq°a | *ṭuṭa- | perpli |
| road | *-eqq’ / *-aqq’ | *məʕ°á | GZ*gza- | gza |
| name | *cc’Vr, *cc’Vri | *(p’)c’a | *ʓ₁ax-e- | saxeli; gvari |
| kill | *-Vƛ’ | *ƛ’ə́ | k’vla | |
| burn | *-Vk’ | *ca; *bla/ə | *c₁x- | ʦ’va |
| know | *(-)Vc’ | *ć’a | codna | |
| black | *alč’i- (*ʕalč’i-) | *ć’°a | šavi | |
| round | *goRg / *gog-R- | mrgvali | ||
| dry | *-aqq’(u) / *-uqq’ | *ʕ°ə́ | *šwer-, *šwr- | mšrali |
| thin | *(C)-uƛ’Vl- | *č’°a | GZ*ttx-el- | txeli |
| what | *sti- | *sə-tʰə; *śə-da (P-Circassian) | *ma- | ra |
| one | *cV (*cʕV ?) | *za | GZ*ert- | erti |
| five | *(W)-ƛƛi / *ƛƛwi | *txᵒə | *xut- | xuti |
| Caucasian (areal) |
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| Indo- European |
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| Turkic |
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| Others | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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