| Chirag | |
|---|---|
| хьаргънилла,xarʁnilla kub хьугъул мец,ĥuġul | |
| Pronunciation | [xarʁnillakub] [xuʁul] |
| Native to | North Caucasus |
| Region | Agulsky District,Dagestan |
| Ethnicity | 2,300 Chirag Dargins (2019–2024) |
Native speakers | 2,000 (2021)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
dar-chi | |
| Glottolog | chir1284 |
_2021.png) Chirag | |
Chirag (Chirag: хьаргънилла,xarʁnilla kub[2]) is a language in theDargin dialect continuum spoken inDagestan,Russia. It is spoken around the village ofChirag, but some speakers have moved toKaspiysk. Chirag is often considered a divergent dialect ofDargwa,[3] despite not beingmutually intelligible withliterary Dargwa.[4]Ethnologue lists it under the dialects of Dargwa but recognizes that it may be a separate language.[5]
Based on lexical similarity, Chirag is usually classified as a separate language from other varieties of Dargwa.[6] It has 67% lexical similarity with the North-Central group, 77.6% with the South group, and 69% withKaitag; within the South group, it has 84% lexical similarity with Qunqi Amuq.[6] It was apparently the first language to diverge from Proto-Dargwa.[4]
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg) | This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(March 2022) |
Chirag has four vowels:/i/,/e/,/u/, and/a/,[7] along with two "epiglottalized" vowels,/iˁ/ and/aˁ/.Vowel length also exists for most vowels.[4]
In Chirag, stressed syllables are specified for tone.[8]
Chirag has some phonological processes that pertain to specific morphological elements. The plural suffix-e attracts stress and induces vowel deletion on the final syllable of disyllabic nouns (e.g.,qisqan 'spider',qisqne 'spiders').[9] Verbal prefixes have optional front/back vowel harmony.[9]
The permittedsyllable structures are CV, CVC, and CVRT.[4]
| This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(March 2022) |
Chirag ishead-final, has fairly flexible word order and is rich with inflectional morphology.[10] It hasergative–absolutive alignment in its case marking; the subject of a transitive verb is overtly marked with ergative case, and the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb are unmarked:[1][10]
ʡali-le
Ali-ERG
ʡali-le qa̰r-be d-iʡ-un.
Ali-ERG apple-PL(ABS) N.PL-steal:PFV-AOR.3
Ali stole apples.
There are threenoun classes, being male, female, and neuter. In the plural form, however, the male and female classes are identical, thus leading to a two-way human-nonhuman opposition.[11]
Due to the proximity of Chirag toAghul,Lak, andLezgin, it has some loanwords from these languages, such asмарххале ("snow", derived from Lakмарххале).
There are efforts to enableautomated translation of text from English to Chirag.[12]
The proposedNorth Caucasian language family comprises theNortheast andNorthwest Caucasian language families. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Northwest (Pontic) |
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| Northeast (Caspian) |
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Italics indicateextinct languages | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Caucasian (areal) |
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| Indo- European |
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| Turkic |
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| Others | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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