Native to Russia Native speakers 310,000 (2010 census) | Ethnicity Karachays, Balkars Dialects Karachay
Balkar | |
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Region Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay–Cherkessia, Afyonkarahisar Province Language family Turkic
Common Turkic
Kipchak
Kipchak–Cuman (ru)
Karachay-Balkar | ||
The Karachay-Balkar language or Karachay-Balkar Turkish (Къарачай-Малкъар тил, Qaraçay-Malqar til or Таулу тил, Tawlu til) is a Turkic language spoken by the Karachays and Balkars. It is divided into two dialects: Karachay-Baksan-Chegem, which pronounces two phonemes as /tʃ/ and /dʒ/, and Balkar, which pronounces the corresponding phonemes as /ts/ and /z/. The modern Karachay-Balkar written language is based on the Karachay-Baksan-Chegem dialect. The language is closely related to Kumyk.
Contents
Alphabet
Modern Karachay-Balkar Cyrillic alphabet:
Modern Karachay-Balkar Latin alphabet:
Language example
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Karachay-Balkar:
Loanwords
Loanwords from Ossetian, Kabardian, Arabic, and Persian are fairly numerous.
References
Karachay-Balkar language Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA