Svan (ლუშნუ ნინlušnu nin;Georgian:სვანური ენა,romanized:svanuri ena) is aKartvelian language spoken in the westernGeorgian region ofSvaneti primarily by theSvan people.[2][3] With its speakers variously estimated to be between 30,000 and 80,000, theUNESCO designates Svan as a "definitelyendangered language".[4] It is of particular interest because it has retained many features that have been lost in the other Kartvelian languages.
Svan retains thevoiceless aspirated uvular plosive,/qʰ/, and the glides/w/ and/j/. It has a larger vowel inventory than Georgian; the Upper Bal dialect of Svan has the most vowels of any South-Caucasian language, having both long and short versions of/aɛiɔuæøy/ plus/əeː/, a total of 18 vowels (Georgian, by contrast, has just five).
Its morphology is less regular than that of the other three sister languages, and there are notable differences inconjugation.
Svan is the native language of fewer than 30,000Svans (15,000 of whom are Upper Svan dialect speakers and 12,000 are Lower Svan), living in the mountains ofSvaneti, i.e. in the districts ofMestia andLentekhi of Georgia, along theEnguri,Tskhenistsqali andKodori rivers. Some Svan speakers live in theKodori Valley of the de facto independent republic ofAbkhazia. Although conditions there make it difficult to reliably establish their numbers, there are only an estimated 2,500 Svan individuals living there.[5]
The language is used in familiar and casual social communication. It has no written standard or official status.[6] Most speakers also speakGeorgian. The language is considered endangered, as proficiency in it among young people is limited.
Svan is the most differentiated member of the four South-Caucasian languages and is believed to have split off in the2nd millennium BC or earlier, about one thousand years beforeGeorgian andZan split from each other.
Soviet ethnologistEvdokia Kozhevnikova extensively documented the Svan language during her fieldwork inSvaneti in the 1920s and 1930s.[7]
The consonant inventory of Svan is more or less the same as that ofOld Georgian. That is, compared to Modern Georgian, it also has/j/,/q/ and/w/, but the labiodental fricative only appears as an allophone of/w/ in the Ln dialect. Furthermore, the uvular consonants/q/ and/q’/ are realized as affricates, i.e.[q͡χ] and[q͡χʼ].[8]
The vowel inventory of Svan varies between different dialects. For instance, Proto-Svan phonemic long vowels occur in the Upper Bal, Cholur and Lashkh dialects, but have been lost in the Lentekh and Lower Bal dialects. Compared to Georgian, Svan also has a central or back unrounded high vowel/ə/ (realized as[ɯ]~[ɨ]), the low front/æ/ (except for Lashkh) and the front rounded vowels/œ/ and/y/ (also except for Lashkh). The front rounded vowels are often realized as diphthongs[we] and[wi] and are therefore sometimes not treated as separate phonemes.[8]
These are supplemented by diacritics on the vowels (theumlaut for front vowels andmacron for length), though those are not normally written. The digraphs
ჳი ("wi")/y/
ჳე ("we")/œ/
are used in the Lower Bal and Lentekh dialects, and occasionally in Upper Bal; these sounds do not occur in Lashkh dialect.
^Levinson, David. Ethnic Groups Worldwide: A Ready Reference Handbook. Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1998. p 34
^Tuite, Kevin (1991–1996). "Svans". In Friedrich, Paul; Diamond, Norma (eds.).Encyclopedia of World Cultures. Vol. VI. Boston, Mass.: G.K. Hall. p. 343.ISBN0-8168-8840-X.OCLC22492614.
^Margiani, Ketevan (2023). "Texts in the Svan Language by Dina Kozhevnikova (Linguistic Analysis)". In Kvantidze, Gulnara; Khizanashvili, Manana (eds.).Dina Kozhevnikova: Ethnographical Records (in Georgian). Tbilisi:Georgian National Museum. p. 82.ISBN978-9941-9822-1-7.
Palmaitis, Mykolas Letas; Gudjedjiani, Chato (1986).Upper Svan: Grammar and texts. Vilnius: Mokslas.
Oniani, Aleksandre (2005).Die swanische Sprache (Teil I: Phonologie, Morphonologie, Morphologie des Nomens; Teil II: Morphologie des Verbs, Verbal-nomen, Udeteroi). Translated by Fähnrich, Heinz. Jena: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität.
Tuite, Kevin (1997).Svan(PDF). Languages of the World, Materials, vol. 139. Munich: LINCOM-Europa.ISBN978-3895861543.
Svan DoReCo corpus compiled by Jost Gippert. Audio recordings of narrative texts, with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level and translations.
