Pronunciation [luʃnu nin] Language family Kartvelian
Svan | Native to Georgia Writing system Georgian script | |
 | ||
Region Svaneti
Abkhazia (Kodori Gorge) Native speakers 15,000 (2000)
to 30,000 (1997) | ||
The Svan language (Svan: ლუშნუ ნინ lušnu nin; Georgian: სვანური ენა svanuri ena) is a Kartvelian language spoken in the western Georgian region of Svaneti primarily by the Svan people. With its speakers variously estimated to be between 30,000 and 80,000, the UNESCO designates Svan as a "definitely endangered language". It is of particular interest because it has retained many archaic features that have been lost in the other Kartvelian languages.
Contents
Familial features
Like all languages of the Kartvelian family, Svan has a large number of consonants. It has agreement between subject and object, and a split-ergative morphosyntactic system. Verbs are marked for aspect, evidentiality and "version".
Distinguishing features
Svan retains the voiceless 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 Kartvelian language, having both long and short versions of /a ɛ i ɔ u æ ø y/ plus /ə eː/, 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 in verbal inflections.
Distribution
Svan is the native language of fewer than 30,000 Svans (15,000 of whom are Upper Svan dialect speakers and 12,000 are Lower Svan), living in the mountains of Svaneti, i.e. in the districts of Mestia and Lentekhi of Georgia, along the Enguri, Tskhenistskali and Kodori rivers. Some Svan speakers live in the Kodori Valley of the de facto independent republic of Abkhazia. Although conditions there make it difficult to reliably establish their numbers, there are only an estimated 2,500 Svan individuals living there.
The language is used in familiar and casual social communication. It has no written standard or official status. Most speakers also speak Georgian, the country's official language, and use it as their literary and business language. There is no official instruction in Svan, and the number of speakers is declining due to the dispersal of the Svan population in the face of increasing economic hardship. The language is regarded as being endangered, as proficiency in it among young people is limited.
History
Svan is the most differentiated member of the four Kartvelian languages and is believed to have split off in the 2nd millennium BC or earlier, about one thousand years before Georgian did.
Dialects
The Svan language is divided into the following dialects and subdialects:
Vowels
- Freely varies between [ə] and [ɨ]
Apart from the odd /eː/, only Upper Bal and Lashkh dialects have long vowels. Only Upper Bal has /æ, æː/; Lashkh does not have the front rounded vowels /œ, œː, y, yː/.
Alphabet
The alphabet, illustrated above, is similar to the Mingrelian alphabet, with a few additional letters otherwise obsolete in the Georgian script:
These are supplemented by diacritics on the vowels (the umlaut for front vowels and macron for length), though those are not normally written. The digraphs
are used in the Lower Bal and Lentekh dialects, and occasionally in Upper Bal; these sounds do not occur in Lashkh dialect.