Karachay-Balkar language
Spoken in
- Altaic languages ( disputed) Turkic languages Kipchak languages Karachay- Balkar
Kabardino -Balkaria ( Balkar )
-
Krc
Krc
The Karachay- Balkar language (self- designation: Къарачай - малкъар тил / Qaratschaj - malqar til ) is a Western Turkic language of the Pontic- Caspian subgroup. The short name is Karachay- Balkar.
Karachay- Balkar decays dialect in the Karachay and Balkar Einzelidiome. However, the linguistic differences between the two dialects are minimal, so that the Turkic people of Karachay- Balkar and view them as a single language. However, they are sometimes counted in the classification of Turkic languages as a single language. (see also classification options )
Language names
From the 17th century to the 1920s, the Karachay- Balkar was ( erroneously ) referred to as Tatar or differentiated than mountain Tatar. The former self- designations of the language were Tuvh til Tuvh tili or what to do with "Mountain Language" ( " Tuvh " = mountain; also compare Turkish " Dağ " ) can translate.
Main distribution
Karachay- Balkar today is the written language of around 250,000 people. Main distribution area of the language is today's Republic of Karachay -Cherkessia in southern Russia on the Georgian border to the northeast of the Black Sea. From 1944, the Speaker of the Karachay- Balkar were deported to Central Asia; In 1957 they were able to return under certain conditions back into their old settlements.
In the last official census of the Soviet Union ( 1989) still 151,000 or 98 % of Karachay gave their version of the language, " Karatschaische ". From the neighboring Balkarians gave 79 702 Balkarians to, " Balkar " to have as a mother tongue.
10,000 Karachay- Balkar an unknown number of today live in Turkey ( Eskisehir ) and 4,000 in the United States (New Jersey).
Classification
Karachay- Balkar is classified with under different. So lists the " Fischer Lexicon languages " (1987), this language as follows.
- Turkic languages
- Western branch
- Kipchak group
- Kiptschakisch - oghusische group
- Karachay
- Balkar
In contrast, the language in the " Metzler Lexikon Sprache " (1993) is classified as follows.
- Turkic languages
- West Turkish ( Kiptschakisch )
- Pontic - Caspian ( Kipchak - Oghusisch )
- Karachay
- Balkar
The current classification is listed in the article Turkic languages .
Alphabets
The Turkic-speaking peoples of the region used in the Middle Ages a osttürkisches idiom that Tschagataiische, as a written language, which was written by the Persian- Arabic alphabet. From the 17th and 18th centuries, the Chagatai was replaced by the " Tatar ", but which was also written in the Arabic alphabet. This " Tatar " was formed mainly from two Turkic languages , which was then in the Caucasus region alongside the Arabian some sort of " lingua franca " were: the Kumyk and Azerbaijan. Addition, however, also had the Persian in the 17th and 18th centuries, a great influence on the language, since it was widely used as a "language of high poetry " in the Caucasus and its influence until the Russian conquest of the 19th century in favor of the Russian went out.
Independent written language Karachay- Balkar was only in 1924 when the Arabic alphabet replaced by a " Latin alphabet " and a separate grammar and spelling was introduced to the model of Azerbaijan. (see also table below. )
Since 1936, Karachay- Balkar had, after the introduction of compulsory prescribed by Moscow Russian lessons are written with a modified Cyrillic alphabet. ( see table below)
With the beginning of the collapse of the USSR called for pan-Turkish circles of Karachay- Balkar and from 1988 the re-introduction of the Arabic script. This was even admitted in the short term by the regional authorities. Yet Scripture in 1989 was changed back to the Cyrillic.
After a Turkgipfel in Ankara, which took place in October 1990, also called for the Karachay- Balkar re- introduction of a Latin -based alphabet. You could justify the claim so that their written language had its independent roots in the Turkish Latin alphabets in the 1920s. Between the years 1991 and 1995 was ( unofficially ) worked with various Latin alphabets, but could not prevail in the region. Thus, the Karachay- Balkar went back over to the Cyrillic letters.
The re- Latinization of the Karachay- Balkar people since then have strayed. Only militant circles of Karachay- Balkar and use the modern Turkish alphabet on their websites, there to promote a new pan-Turkism.