Kabardian language

Spoken in

Northwest Caucasian Languages Circassian Kabardian

Karachay -Cherkessia

Kbd

The Kabardinian language (also East Circassian ) is a Northwest Caucasian language. The approximately 1.6 million speakers of this language are Circassians. The Kabarda in Russia refer to their language as къэбэрдеибзэ ( qăbărdeibză ) or with the preamble адыгэбзэ ( adəgăbză ) that identifies the Circassian languages in general.

Distribution areas and numbers of speakers

The original homeland of the language is the territory between the rivers Kuban and Terek north of the Caucasus, which makes up the northern half of the Autonomous Republic of Kabardino -Balkaria, and parts of adjoining areas today. The language has both in Kabardino -Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia in the west bordering official character. After 1864, the Russians had taken power over the Kabarda, fled, many members of the people in the former Ottoman Empire and settled in northern Anatolia, where today about two -thirds of the speaker ( in 2005, around one million ) of the Kabardian live. In the original language area were living in 2002 about 500,000 native speakers. Some Kabarda emigrated to other countries like Jordan from ( 56,000 ), Syria ( 39,000 ) and Germany ( 14,000 ).

Classification

Together with the very closely related Adyge and also standing, now extinct Ubychischen forms the Kabardian the Circassian languages ( also Tscherkesso - Ubychisch ). These in turn form with the Abkhaz and the Abasinischen the language family of the Northwest Caucasian languages . A relationship of this language family with the post- Dagestani languages in the eastern Caucasus will be discussed, but is not generally recognized.

Dialects

The dialects of Kabardian are Baksan, Malka, Mozdok, Kuban, Terek and by some scientists viewed as a separate language Beslenej. The Baksan dialect is the basis for the Kabardinian written language.

Alphabet

The Kabardian was written in 1923 in Latin script. Since 1936, it is written in Cyrillic. The Kabardino - Cyrillic alphabet consists of 54 letters.

Kabarday Kuban River Terek River Caucasus Mountains University of Calgary Integrated Authority File

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