Abaza language

The Abaza language (абаза бызшва, abaza byzšwa; Adyghe: абазэбзэ) is a language of the Caucasus mountains in the Russian Karachay–Cherkess Republic spoken by the Abazins. It consists of two dialects, the Ashkherewa dialect and the T'ap'anta dialect, which is the literary standard. The language also consists of five sub dialects known as Psyzh-Krasnovostok, Abazakt, Apsua, Kubin-Elburgan and Kuvin.

Contents

• Phonology
• Orthography
• References

Abaza is spoken by approximately 35,000 people in Russia, where it is written in a Cyrillic alphabet, as well as another 10,000 in Turkey, where the Latin script is used.

Abaza, like its relatives in the family of Northwest Caucasian languages, is a highly agglutinative language. For example, the verb in the English sentence "He couldn't make them give it back to her" contains four arguments (a term used in valency grammar): he, them, give it back, to her. Abaza marks arguments morphologically, and incorporates all four arguments as pronominal prefixes on the verb. The Abaza language contains two dialects in accordance to the Tapanta and Shkaraua familial districts. The subdialects include Abazakt, Apsua, Kubin-Elburgan, Kuvin and Psyzh-Krasnovostok.

It has a large consonantal inventory (63 phonemes) coupled with a minimal vowel inventory (two vowels). It is very closely related to Abkhaz, but it preserves a few phonemes which Abkhaz lacks, such as a voiced pharyngeal fricative. Work on Abaza has been carried out by W. S. Allen, Brian O'Herin, and John Colarusso.