Bzyb is a major dialect of
AbkhazAbkhaz is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken mainly by the Abkhaz people. It is the official language of Abkhazia where around 100,000 people speak it. Furthermore, it is spoken by thousands of members of the Abkhazian diaspora in Turkey, Georgia's autonomous republic of Adjara, Syria, Jordan...
, spoken in the
CaucasusThe Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
and
TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
. It is named after the
BzybBzyb, Bzyp, Bzyph or Bziphi may refer to one of the following things related to Abkhazia:*Bzyb , the historical region of Abkhazia**Bzyb River, the river flowing through it**Bzyb , a village located in this region...
(бзыҧ) area.
It differs from standard Abkhaz mainly in terms of
phonologyPhonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
. It shares the [ɕʷ] and [ʑʷ] sounds with the Sadz dialect, and the [t͡ɕ], [d͡ʑ], [t͡ɕʼ], [ɕ], [ʑ], [χˤ], and [χˤʷ] sounds are unique to Bzyp. Standard Abkhaz (which is based on the Abzhywa dialect) lacks these sounds.
The Bzyp
consonantIn articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
inventory appears to have been the fundamental inventory of Proto-Abkhaz, with the inventories of Abzhywa and Sadz being reduced from this total, rather than the Bzyp series being innovative.