Dagestanian languages are one of the largest language families, characterized by an extraordinary variety of dialects. There are about 7 million carriers. And in this regard, the Caucasus - the "country of mountains" - becomes a kind of "mountain of languages". What is the area of this linguistic group and what is the Russian-Dagestan language?
Classification
Dagestanian languages are included in the West-Eastern group of Caucasian languages among the language families of the Eurasian continent and are divided into 5-6 branches. The eastern part of this group, or Chechen-Dagestan, is related to the western, or Abkhaz-Adyghe. In all languages of this group, one can trace the presence of a common phonetic system.
Sometimes this Caucasian isogloss is called the Nakh-Dagestanian languages, since all the eastern languages branched off into a separate Nakh cluster already in the 3rd century BC. e. The Nakh branch has the largest number of speakers - more than 2,500,000 people.
History of occurrence
Initially, there was a common East Caucasian language of the inflectional-agglutinative type, that is, it uses in word formation mainly the method of adding various endings. After the III century BC. e. one can already observe the disintegration of the common Proto-Caucasian language into groups, including Dagestan, which already began to include many dialects, and then separate languages \u200b\u200bthat have only some similarities in phonetic, grammatical and syntactic structure.
The final divergence can be dated to the early Bronze Age.
Area
The languages of Dagestan are common throughout the Caucasus, in particular in Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia. Some speakers live in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Jordan and other countries belonging to the Middle East.
Composition of the language family
The family of Dagestan languages is quite extensive. However, Oriental linguists have not studied even half of all the languages included in this Dagestan isogloss. Only Chechen, Avar, Dargin, Lak and Lezgin are well developed by scientists, while the rest are either little studied or not affected at all.
The language scheme of the Dagestan languages is as follows:
- Nakh is the first branch. It includes the Chechen, Ingush and Batsbi languages. This branch has the largest number of speakers, because there are about two million Chechens alone.
- Avaro-Ando-Tsez languages are the second branch of the language family of Dagestan. It includes several subgroups:Avaro-Andean, Andean, as well as Tsez, or Dido. These subbranches make up the lion's share of all other speakers of this language group.
- Lak is the third branch of the language family of Dagestan, which includes only the Lak language itself with about 140,000 speakers.
- Dargin is the fourth branch, which includes several subgroups: North Dargin, Megeb, Southwest Dargin, Chirag, Kaitag and Kubachi-Akhshta. All of these sub-branches are dialects with no more than 2,000 speakers per language subgroup.
- Lezgi languages are the fifth branch of the language family of Dagestan. It includes several subgroups: East Lezgin, West Lezgin, South Lezgin, Archa and Uda. Number of speakers: 1,000 to half a million people, depending on the language subgroup.
- Khinalug is the sixth branch, which includes the one and only Khinalug language, which is little studied.
Language branches
Each branch is divided into many dialects and adverbs, presented in all their diversity.
The Nakh branch includes:
- Chechen - about 2,000,000 people.
- Ingush - 455,868 people.
- Batsby - 3000 speakers.
The Avar-Ando-Tsez branch includes:
- Avar - about 1,000,000 people.
- Andean - about 6,000 speakers.
- Akhvakh - about 200 people.
- Karatinskiy - more than 250carriers.
- Botlikh - more than 200 people.
- Godoberian - 128 speakers.
- Bagvalinsky - almost 1,500 people.
- Tindinskiy - more than 6,500 speakers.
- Chamalinsky - about 500 people.
- Tsese - about 12,500 speakers.
- Khvarshinsky - little studied, the number of speakers is unknown.
- Inhokvarian - little studied, the number of speakers is unknown.
- Ginukh - about 500 people.
- Bezhtinsky - almost 7000 speakers.
- Gunzibsky - more than 1000 people.
The Lak branch includes only the Lak language itself, with just over 100,000 native speakers.
The Dargin branch includes:
- Akushinsky - little studied, the number of carriers is unknown.
- Dargin Literary - little studied, the number of speakers is unknown.
- Muginsky - about 3000 people.
- Tsudahari is little studied, the number of speakers is unknown.
- Gapshiminsko-Butrinsky - little studied, the number of speakers is unknown.
- Urakhinsky, which includes Kabinsky and Khyurkily dialects with up to 70,000 speakers.
- Murego-Gubden - little studied, the number of speakers is unknown.
- Kadar is little studied, the number of speakers is unknown.
- Muirinsky - about 18,000 people.
- Megebian is little studied, the number of speakers is unknown.
- Sirkha is little studied, the number of speakers is unknown.
- Amukh-Khudutsky - about 1,600 people.
- Kunkinsky is little studied, the number of carriers is unknown.
- Sanzhi-itsarinsky -little studied, the number of carriers is unknown.
- Kaitagsky - about 21,000 people.
- Kubachi is little studied, the number of speakers is unknown.
- Ashtinsky - about 2000 people.
The Lezgin branch includes:
- Lezgi - more than 650,000 people.
- Tabasaran - more than 126,000 speakers.
- Agul - about 30,000 people.
- Rutul - more than 30,000 speakers.
- Tsakhursky - about 10,000 people.
- Budukh - about 5,000 speakers.
- Kryzsky - about 9,000 people.
- Archinsky - almost 1000 speakers.
- Udi - about 8,000 people.
The Lezgi branch also included two more: Albanian and Aghvan, which are now considered dead languages.
The last branch includes only Khinalug.
According to UNESCO, there are 25 languages in the Republic of Dagestan that are threatened with extinction. Some languages are spoken by only a few thousand or even a few hundred people. The current time for Dagestan and its languages is the most difficult. The younger generation is less and less likely to use their national dialect in everyday speech.
Relatives
If you take a dictionary of the Dagestan language, for example, Chechen-Russian, and refer to the article by Professor A. K. Mitanni article. It was the dialect of ancient Mesopotamia, whereAbkhaz-Circassian tribes once lived in the neighborhood. This language was the middle link between the Abkhaz and Nakh-Dagestan languages.
Other scientists, Starostin and Dyakonov, believe that the languages of this republic are similar to Hurrian, whose area was in the south of the Armenian Highlands.
Phonetic features
Words in the Dagestan language are characterized by moderate vocalism, that is, the presence of vowels within 10, and very complex consonantism. In some adverbs, this number of consonants can reach 45.
The languages of Dagestan use not only voiced and deaf, but also spirants - a combination of these sounds, as well as aspirated consonants, which is an important distinguishing feature of all oriental languages. Vowels most often do not differ in longitude, but are divided into nasal and throat sounds with the addition of a consonant. The percussion system is movable. It is often subject to phrasal articulation and intonation.
Morphological features
In the dictionary of the Dagestan language, you can see that words are mainly formed by affixing stems and adding various inflections. There are much fewer prefixes or prefixes in the languages and dialects of Dagestan than suffixes.
Nouns have categories of case, number, and verbs have categories of class, aspect, tense and mood. In some languages, such as Batsbi, Lak and Dargin, there is a personal conjugation, while in others the subject and object conjugation predominates. Adjectives, unlike the Russian language, are invariablepart of speech. And numerals can be seen both in decimal and in vigesimal system.
Syntactic features
The syntax of the Dagestan languages, Avar, for example, often allows inversion, and the word order in a sentence is almost always neutral. Orientalists are inclined to believe that in languages there are predominantly ergative constructions, in which only action predominates, than nominative constructions, where the noun becomes the main member of the sentence.
Not all linguists also share the idea that the Dagestan languages have a complex sentence, although the simple, complex allied and non-union are well developed.
The center of the sentence, of course, is the predicate expressed by the verb.
Vocabulary
With regard to vocabulary, we can say that the basis of all Dagestan languages is a large layer of native word forms and their derivatives.
A distinctive feature in the lexical plan is the presence of special nominal classes of 5 or 6 types, for example, classes of men, women, things in different numbers.
Today there are a lot of Russianisms in languages, especially in Chechen and Ingush. Saying that there is a Russian-Dagestan language is not a joke.
Writing
For the most part, the languages and dialects of Dagestan are unwritten or have an undeveloped writing system. However, since the speakers of this language group mainly profess Islam, then together with this religion inArabic script penetrates languages.
Already in the 17th century, the Avars began to adjust the Arabic alphabet to the phonetic system. During this period, the Adjam script is created, which adapts the Arabic alphabet, making it so that all the sounds of the Dagestan language can be reflected in the letter. This is obtained as follows - one letter of the Arabic alphabet conveys several sounds in the letter.
Since the 30s of the XX century, this Ajam alphabet begins to deform and evolve. The alphabet itself is called "New Ajam", the font is cast, and the first printed experiments on religious themes are already appearing. Later textbooks and popular scientific literature will be put into print. In the 1940s, the "New Ajam" was replaced by the Latin alphabet, which is based on the Turkic.
Besides this, some languages branch off from the general graphic rule and use Cyrillic script, that is, Russian graphics.
These are languages like:
- Chechen.
- Ingush.
- Avar.
- Lakskiy.
- Darginsky.
- Lezginsky.
- Tabasaran.
This is interesting! One of the Dagestan languages, translated into Russian, called Udi, had its own script.
Thus, the languages of Dagestan are one of the most extensive and diverse language families. Mostly those who speak Dagestan dialects live in the Caucasus, but speakers can also be found in the countries of the Middle East. languages not onlyrich in their phonetic system, but also constitute a living culture of the mountain peoples.
How many songs have been written in the Dagestan language and how many samples of high poetry! In addition, many natives of Dagestan are known to the whole world, such as the poet Rasul Gamzatov and the athlete Elena Isinbayeva. The music of the Dagestan language is represented on the Russian stage by such stars as Jasmine and Elbrus Dzhanmirzoev, who very often sing national songs, not forgetting their native dialect.
