Native to Russia Native speakers 490,000 (2010 census) | Region Dagestan Official language in Dagestan (Russia) | |
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Ethnicity 590,000 Dargins (2010 census) Language family Northeast Caucasian
Dargin
Dargwa | ||
The Dargwa or Dargin language is spoken by the Dargin people in the Russian republic Dagestan. It is the literary and main dialect of the dialect continuum constituting the Dargin languages. The four other languages in this dialect continuum (Kajtak, Kubachi, Itsari, and Chirag) are often considered variants of Dargwa. Ethnologue lists these under Dargwa, but recognizes that these may be different languages. Its people are Sunni Muslims. Dargwa uses a Cyrillic script.
According to the 2002 Census, there are 429,347 speakers of Dargwa proper in Dagestan, 7,188 in neighbouring Kalmykia, 1,620 in Khanty–Mansi AO, 680 in Chechnya, and hundreds more in other parts of Russia. Figures for the Lakh dialect spoken in central Dagestan are 142,523 in Dagestan, 1,504 in Kabardino-Balkaria, 708 in Khanty–Mansi.