Native to Russia Native speakers 450,000 (2010 census) | Ethnicity Kumyks Writing system Cyrillic and Latin | |
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Region Dagestan, Chechnya, North Ossetia Language family Turkic
Common Turkic
Kypchak
Kypchak–Cuman
Kumyk | ||
Kumyk (къумукъ тил, qumuq til) is a Turkic language, spoken by about 426,212 speakers (the Kumyks) in the Dagestan republic of Russian Federation.
Irchi Kazak (Yırçı Qazaq; born 1839) is usually considered to be a founder of Kumyk literature. Kumyk was written using Arabic script until 1928, Latin script from 1928–1938, and Cyrillic script since then.
The first regular newspapers and magazines appeared in 1917–18. Currently, the newspaper Ёлдаш (Yoldash, "Companion"), the successor of the Soviet-era Ленин ёлу (Lenin yolu, "Lenin's Path"), prints around 5,000 copies 3 times a week.
It was composed sequentially of several Turkic dialects—those of the Oghur, Oghuz and Kypchak types—, which, in addition, have been interacting with Caucasian languages, namely Avar, Dargwa, Chechen, as well as with Ossetic. The language has also been influenced by Russian during the last century.