Avar language

Avar[1][2] (Магӏарул мацӏ Maǥarul macʼ, [maʕarul mat͡sʼ], "language of the mountains") or (Авар мацӏ Awar macʼ [awar mat͡sʼ] "Avar language"), also known as Avaric,[3][4] is a Northeast Caucasian language of the Avar–Andic subgroup that is spoken by Avars, primarily in Dagestan. In 2010, there were approximately 1 million speakers in Dagestan and rest of Russia.

This article is about the language spoken in Dagestan. For the language spoken in medieval Europe, see Pannonian Avars § Language.

Avar
Avaric
Магӏарул мацӏ, Авар мацӏ Maǥarul macʼ, Awar macʼ
Native to	Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Turkey
Ethnicity	Avars
Native speakers	1,000,000 (2010)[1]
Language family	Northeast Caucasian Avar–Andic Avar
Writing system	Cyrillic (current) Georgian, Arabic, Latin (historical)
Official status
Official language in	Dagestan (Russia)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	av – Avaric
ISO 639-2	ava – Avaric
ISO 639-3	Either: ava – Avaric oav – Old Avar
Linguist List	ava – Avar
	oav – Old Avar
Glottolog	avar1256[2]

Geographic distribution

It is spoken mainly in the western and southern parts of the Russian Caucasus republic of Dagestan, and the Balaken, Zaqatala regions of north-western Azerbaijan.[1] Some Avars live in other regions of Russia. There are also small communities of speakers living in the Russian republics of Chechnya and Kalmykia; in Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Jordan, and the Marmara Sea region of Turkey. It is spoken by about 762,000 people worldwide. UNESCO classifies Avar as vulnerable to extinction.[5]

Status

It is one of six literary languages of Dagestan, where it is spoken not only by the Avar, but also serves as the language of communication between different ethnic groups.

Dialects

There are two main dialect groups: the northern, which includes Khunzakh, Kazbek, Gunib, Gumbet and others; and the southern, which includes Andalal, Gidatl', Antsukh, Charoda, Tlyarata, Tsumada, Tsunta and others.

Morphology

Avar is an agglutinative language, of SOV order.

Adverbs do not inflect, outside of inflection for noun class in some adverbs of place: e.g. the /b/ in /ʒani-b/ "inside" and /t͡se-b-e/ "in front". Adverbs of place also distinguish locative, allative, and ablative forms suffixally, such as /ʒani-b/ "inside", /ʒani-b-e/ "to the inside", and /ʒani-sa/ "from the inside". /-go/ is an emphatic suffix taken by underived adjectives.

Phonology

Consonant phonemes of Avar[6]

		Labial	Dental		Alveolar				Palatal	Velar		Uvular		Pharyngeal	Glottal
					central		lateral
			lenis	fortis	lenis	fortis	lenis	fortis		lenis	fortis	lenis	fortis
Nasal		m	n
Plosive	voiced	b	d							ɡ
	voiceless	p	t							k	kː				ʔ
	ejective		tʼ							kʼ	kːʼ
Affricate	voiceless		t͡s	t͡sː	t͡ʃ	t͡ʃː		t͡ɬː					q͡χː
	ejective		t͡sʼ	t͡sːʼ	t͡ʃʼ	t͡ʃːʼ		(t͡ɬːʼ)					q͡χːʼ
Fricative	voiceless		s	sː	ʃ	ʃː	ɬ	ɬː		x	xː	χ	χː	ʜ
	voiced		z		ʒ							ʁ		ʕ	h
Trill					r
Approximant		w					l		j

There are competing analyses of the distinction transcribed in the table with the length sign ⟨ː⟩. Length is part of the distinction, but so is articulatory strength, so they have been analyzed as fortis and lenis. The fortis affricates are long in the fricative part of the contour, e.g. [tsː] (tss), not in the stop part as in geminate affricates in languages such as Japanese and Italian [tːs] (tts). Laver (1994) analyzes e.g. t͡ɬː as a two-segment affricate–fricative sequence /t͡ɬɬ/ (/t^ɬɬ/).[7] Avar has five vowels, /a, e, i, o, u/.

Writing system

There were some attempts to write the Avar language in the Georgian alphabet as early as the 14th century.[8][9] The use of Arabic script for representing Avar in marginal glosses began in the 15th century. The use of Arabic, which is known as ajam, is still known today.[9]

As part of Soviet language re-education policies in 1928 the Ajam was replaced by a Latin alphabet, which in 1938 was in turn replaced by the current Cyrillic script. Essentially, it is the Russian alphabet plus one additional letter called palochka (stick, Ӏ). As that letter cannot be typed with common keyboard layouts, it is often replaced with a capital Latin letter i ( I ), small Latin letter L ( l ), or the numerical digit 1.

Orthography

The Avar language is usually written in the Cyrillic script. The letters of the alphabet are (with their pronunciation given below in IPA transcription):[6][10]

А а /a/	Б б /b/	В в /w/	Г г /ɡ/	Гъ гъ /ʁ/	Гь гь /h/	ГӀ гӏ /ʕ/	Д д /d/
Е е /e/, /je/	Ё ё /jo/	Ж ж /ʒ/	З з /z/	И и /i/	Й й /j/	К к /k/	Къ къ /q͡χːʼ/
Кь кь /t͡ɬːʼ/	КӀ кӏ /kʼ/	КӀкӏ кӏкӏ /kːʼ/	Кк кк /kː/	Л л /l/	ЛӀ лӏ /t͡ɬː/	Лъ лъ /ɬ/	Лълъ лълъ /ɬː/
М м /m/	Н н /n/	О о /o/	П п /p/	Р р /r/	С с /s/	Сс сс /sː/	Т т /t/
ТӀ тӏ /tʼ/	У у /u/	Ф ф /f/	Х х /χ/	Хх хх /χː/	Хъ хъ /q͡χː/	Хь хь /x/	Хьхь хьхь /xː/
ХӀ хӏ /ʜ/	Ц ц /t͡s/	Цц цц /t͡sː/	ЦӀ цӏ /t͡sʼ/	ЦӀцӏ цӏцӏ /t͡sːʼ/	Ч ч /t͡ʃ/	Чч чч /t͡ʃː/	ЧӀ чӏ /t͡ʃʼ/
ЧӀчӏ чӏчӏ /t͡ʃːʼ/	Ш ш /ʃ/	Щ щ /ʃː/	Ъ ъ /ʔ/	Ы ы /ɨ/	Ь ь	Э э /e/	Ю ю /ju/
Я я /ja/

History

The literary language is based on the болмацӏ (bolmacʼ)—bo = "army" or "country", and macʼ = "language"—the common language used between speakers of different dialects and languages. The bolmacʼ in turn was mainly derived from the dialect of Khunzakh, the capital and cultural centre of the Avar region, with some influence from the southern dialects. Nowadays the literary language is influencing the dialects, levelling out their differences.

The most famous figure of modern Avar literature is Rasul Gamzatov (died November 3, 2003), the People's Poet of Dagestan. Translations of his works into Russian have gained him a wide audience all over the former Soviet Union.

Samples

English	Avar	Transliteration	IPA
Hello!	Ворчӏами!	Worç’ami!	/wort͡ʃ’ami/
How are you doing?	Щиб хӏaл бугеб?	Şşib hal bugeb?	/ʃːib ʜal bugeb/
How are you?	Иш кин бугеб?	İş kin bugeb?	/iʃ kin bugeb/
What is your name?	Дуда цӏар щиб?	Duda c’ar şşib?	/duda t͡s’ar ʃːib/
How old are you?	Дур чан сон бугеб?	Dur çan son bugeb?	/dur t͡ʃan son bugeb/
Where are you going?	Mун киве ина вугев?	Mun kiwe ina wugew?	/mun kiwe ina wugew/
Sorry!	Тӏаса лъугьа!	T’asa łuḩa!	/t’asa ɬuha/
Where is the little boy going?	Киве гьитӏинав вас унев вугев?	Kiwe ḩit’inaw was unew wugew?	/kiwe hit’inaw was unew wugew/
The boy broke a bottle.	Васас шиша бекана.	Wasas şişa bekana.	/wasas ʃiʃa bekana/
They are building the road.	Гьез нух бале (гьабулеб) буго.	Ḩez nux́ bale (ḩabuleb) bugo.	/hez nuχ bale (habuleb) bugo/

See also

• Northeast Caucasian languages
• Languages of the Caucasus

References

1. Avar at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
   Old Avar at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Avar". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
3. "Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: ava". ISO 639-2 Registration Authority - Library of Congress. Retrieved 2017-07-05. Name: Avaric
4. "Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: ava". ISO 639-3 Registration Authority - SIL International. Retrieved 2017-07-05. Name: Avaric
5. "UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger". UNESCO. Retrieved 19 April 2015.
6. Consonant Systems of the North-East Caucasian Languages on TITUS DIDACTICA
7. Laver (1994) Principles of Phonetics p. 371.
8. Simon Crisp,"Language Planning and the Orthography of Avar", Folia Slavica 7, 1–2 (1984): 91–104.
9. Simon Crisp, "The Formation and Development of Literary Avar", pp. 143–62, in Isabelle T. Kreindler, ed., Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Soviet National Languages: Their Past, Present and Future, Contributions to the Sociology of Language, 40 (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1985).
10. Omniglot on the Avar alphabet, language and pronunciation

External links

• RFE/RL North Caucasus Radio (also includes Chechen and Adyghe)
• Avar language corpus (in English, Russian, Polish and Belarusian)
• Avar Cyrillic-Latin text and website converter
• Online Avar–Russian dictionary
• Avar language information in Russian