Chechen language

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Chechen language

The Chechen language (??????? ???? / Noxçiyn mott; Medieval Chechen: ?????? ???) is spoken by more than 1.3 million people, mostly in Chechnya

Chechnya

The Chechen Republic , or, informally, Chechnya , sometimes referred to as Ichkeria , Chechnia, Chechenia or Nox?iyn, is a federal subjects of Russia of Russia....
and by Chechen people

Chechen people

Chechens constitute the largest native ethnic group originating in the North Caucasus region. They refer to themselves as Nokhchii , which comes from the name of a large Chechen teip, the Nokhchmekhkakhoi, and their homeland....
elsewhere.

hen is one of the languages of the Caucasus

Languages of the Caucasus

The languages of the Caucasus are a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea....
. Linguistically, it is a member of the Nakh family

Nakh languages

The Nakh languages are a small family of languages spoken mostly in Russia and Georgia . The Chechen diaspora is spread all over the countries in the Middle East and Central Asia....
, together with Ingush

Ingush language

Ingush is a language spoken by approximately 415,000 people , known as the Ingush people, across a region covering Ingushetia, Chechnya, Kazakhstan and Russia....
and Bats

Bats language

Bats is the language of the Bats people, a Caucasus minority group, and is part of the Nakh languages family of Caucasian languages. It had 2,500 to 3,000 speakers in 1975....
; they all belong to the Northeast Caucasian languages

Northeast Caucasian languages

The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Caspian, Nakho-Dagestanian, or Dagestanian, are a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia, in northern Azerbaijan, and in Georgia , as well as in diaspora populations....
. Although it is frequently said that Chechen and Ingush are mutually intelligible, this is not true; rather, they generally understand each other through passive bilingualism.

e are a number of Chechen dialects: Akkhiy, Chiantiy, Chiebarloy, Mialkhiy, Nokhchmakhkakhoy, Orstkhoy, Sharoy, Shuotoy and Terloy.

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Encyclopedia

The Chechen language (??????? ???? / Noxçiyn mott; Medieval Chechen: ?????? ???) is spoken by more than 1.3 million people, mostly in Chechnya

Chechnya

Chechen people

Classification

Chechen is one of the languages of the Caucasus

Languages of the Caucasus

Nakh languages

Ingush language

Ingush is a language spoken by approximately 415,000 people , known as the Ingush people, across a region covering Ingushetia, Chechnya, Kazakhstan and Russia....
and Bats

Bats language

Northeast Caucasian languages

Dialects

There are a number of Chechen dialects: Akkhiy, Chiantiy, Chiebarloy, Mialkhiy, Nokhchmakhkakhoy, Orstkhoy, Sharoy, Shuotoy and Terloy. The Kisti

Kist people

The Kists are a Nakh languages-speaking ethnic group in Georgia related to the Chechen people and Ingush people peoples. They primarily live in Pankisi Gorge of the eastern Georgian region of Kakheti where their total number is approximate to 5,000 people....
dialect of Georgia is not easily understood by northern Chechens without a few days practice. One difference in pronunciation is that Kisti aspirated consonants remain aspirated when doubled (fortis) or after /s/, whereas they lose their aspiration in other dialects in these situations.

Geographic distribution

According to the Russian Census

Russian Census (2002)

Russian Census of 2002 was the first census of the Russian Federation carried out on October 9 through October 16, 2002. It was carried out by the Goskomstat ....
in October 2002, 1,330,000 people reported being able to speak Chechen.

Ethnologue

Ethnologue

Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christianity linguistics service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles, in their native language....
estimates the total number worldwide as about 955,000, based on 945,000 speakers in Russia (as per 1989 census), and the estimated speaker count in the Chechen diaspora in the Middle East

Middle East

File:GreaterMiddleEast1.pngThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, western Asia, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East....
countries, especially Jordan

Jordan

Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is an Arab country in Southwest Asia spanning the southern part of the Syrian Desert down to the Gulf of Aqaba....
.

Official status

Chechen is an official language of Chechnya

Chechnya

The Chechen Republic , or, informally, Chechnya , sometimes referred to as Ichkeria , Chechnia, Chechenia or Nox?iyn, is a federal subjects of Russia of Russia....
.

Sounds

Some characteristics of Chechen include its wealth of consonants and sounds similar to Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
and the Salishan languages

Salishan languages

The Salishan languages are a group of languages of the Pacific Northwest . They are characterised by agglutinative and astonishing consonant clusters—for instance the Nux?lk language word meaning "he had had a bunchberry plant" has 13 consonants in a row with no vowels....
of Northern America and a large vowel system resembling those of Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic languages language, spoken by around 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the ?land islands....
and German

German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
.

Consonants

The Chechen language has, like most indigenous languages of the Caucasus, a large number of consonants: about 40 to 60 (depending on the dialect and the analysis), more than in the languages of Europe. Typical of the region, a four-way distinction between voiced, voiceless, ejective, and geminate fortis stops is found.

	Labial Labial consonant Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips or with the lower lip and the upper teeth . English is a bilabial nasal consonant sonorant, and are bilabial stop consonant , and are labiodental fricative consonant....	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the Dental alveolus of the superior teeth....	Postalveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, placing them a bit further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate ....	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the Soft palate)....	Uvular Uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the Palatine uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants....	Epiglottal Epiglottal consonant An epiglottal consonant is a consonant that is articulated with the aryepiglottic folds against the epiglottis. They are occasionally called aryepiglottal consonants....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricatives, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider them to be consonants at all....
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....
Plosive
Affricate Affricate consonant Affricate consonants begin as stop consonants but release as a fricative consonant rather than directly into the following vowel....
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German language , the final consonant of Bach; or the side of the tongue ag...
Rhotic Rhotic consonant Rhotic consonants, or "R"-like sounds, are non-lateral liquid consonants. This class of sounds is difficult to characterise phonetically, though most of them share some acoustic peculiarities, most notably a lowered third formant in their sound spectrum....
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and "typical" consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence....

Nearly any consonant may be fortis due to focus gemination, but only the ones above are found in roots. The consonants of the t cell and are denti-alveolar

Denti-alveolar

In linguistics, a denti-alveolar consonant is a consonant that is articulated with a flat tongue against the alveolar ridge and upper teeth, such as and in languages such as Spanish and French....
; the others of that column are alveolar. is a back velar, but not quite uvular. The phoneme is realized as before front vowels. The trill is usually articulated with a single contact, and therefore sometimes described as a tap . Except in the literary register, and even then only for some speakers, the voiced affricates , have merged into the fricatives , . is found only in European loanwords.

Except when following a consonant, is phonetically , and can be argued to be a glottal stop before a "pharyngealized" (actually epiglottalized) vowel. However, it does not have the distribution constraints characteristic of the anterior pharyngealized (epiglottalized) consonants. Although these may be analyzed as anterior consonant plus (they surface for example as when voiced and when voiceless), Nichols argues that given the severe constraints against consonant cluster

Consonant cluster

In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....
s in Chechen, it is more useful to analyze them as single consonants.

The approximately twenty pharyngealized consonants do not appear in the table above. Labial, alveolar, and postalveolar consonants may be pharyngealized, except for ejectives. Pharyngealized consonants do not occur in verbs or adjectives, and in nouns and adverbs they occur predominantly before the low vowels .

Vowels

Unlike most other languages of the Caucasus, Chechen has an extensive inventory of vowels, about 44 (depending on dialect and analysis), more than most languages of Europe. Many of the vowels are due to umlaut

Umlaut

Umlaut may refer to:*I-mutation or umlaut, historic vowel fronting in any language**Germanic umlaut, the historic fronting of vowels in Germanic languages...
, which is highly productive in the standard dialect. None of the spelling systems used so far have distinguished the vowels with complete accuracy.

front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.... unrounded	front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.... rounded	back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.... ~ central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel....

All vowels may be nasalized; nasalization is imposed by the genitive, infinitive

Infinitive

In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English language, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the grammatical particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives....
, and for some speakers the nominative case

Nominative case

The nominative case is a grammatical case for a noun, which generally marks the subject of a verb, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments....
of adjectives. Nasalization is not strong, but it is audible even in final vowels, which are devoiced.

Some of the diphthongs have significant allophony: = ; = ; = .

In closed syllables, long vowels become short in most dialects (not Kisti), but are often still distinct from short vowels (shortened , , , and vs. short , , , and , for example), though which remain distinct depends on the dialect. and are in complementary distribution

Complementary distribution

Complementary distribution in linguistics is the relationship between two different elements, where one element is found in a particular environment and the other element is found in the opposite environment....
( occurs after pharyngealized consonants, whereas does not, and —identical with for most speakers—occurs in closed syllables, while does not) but speakers strongly feel that they are distinct sounds.

Pharyngealization appears to be a feature of the consonants, though some analyses treat it as a feature of the vowels. However, Nichols argues that this does not capture the situation in Chechen well, whereas it is more clearly a feature of the vowel in Ingush: Chechen "one", Ingush , which she analyzes as and . Vowels have a delayed murmured

Breathy voice

Breathy voice is a phonation in which the vocal cords vibrate, as they do in normal voicing, but are held further apart, so that a larger volume of air escapes between them....
onset after pharyngealized voiced consonants and a noisy aspirated onset after pharyngealized voiceless consonants. The high vowels are diphthongized, , whereas the diphthongs undergo metathesis

Metathesis

Metathesis may refer to the following:* Metathesis , in phonology, a sound change that alters the order of phonemes in a word** Quantitative metathesis, a situation in which two vowel sounds follow directly one after the other and a transposition of vowel length takes place...
, .

Grammar

Chechen nouns belong to one of several genders or classes (6), each with a specific prefix with which the verb or an accompanying adjective

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntax role is to grammatical modifier a noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's definition....
agrees. However, Chechen is not a pro-drop language

Pro-drop language

A pro-drop language is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatics inference . The phenomenon of "pronoun-dropping" is also commonly referred to in linguistics as zero or null anaphora ....
: subject pronoun

Pronoun

In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun with or without a Determiner , such as Wiktionary:you and Wiktionary:they in English language....
s are always used in simple sentences and the verb does not agree with the subject or object's person or number, having only tense forms and participles. Among these are an optative

Optative mood

The optative mood is a grammatical mood that indicates a wish or hope. It is similar to the cohortative mood, and closely related to the subjunctive mood....
and an antipassive

Antipassive voice

The antipassive voice is a verb Grammatical voice that works on transitive verbs by deleting the object . They are much rarer than the more familiar passive voice, to which they are similar in decreasing the verb's valency by one....
. Some verbs, however, do not take these prefixes.

Chechen is an ergative, dependent-marking language

Dependent-marking language

A dependent-marking language is one where the Marker s showing relations between different constituents of a phrase tend to be placed on the Syntax#Dependency grammars or Grammatical modifier, rather than the Head of the phrase in question....
using 8 cases

Grammatical case

In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun indicates its grammatical function in a greater phrase or clause; such as the role of subject , of direct object, or of possession ....
and a large number of postpositions to indicate the role of nouns in sentences.

Word order is consistently left-branching (like in Japanese

Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
or Turkish

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
), so that adjectives, demonstratives and relative clauses precede the nouns they modify. Complementizers and adverbial subordinators, as in other Northeast and Northwest Caucasian languages

Northwest Caucasian languages

The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called Pontic, Circassian, or Abkhaz-Adyghe, are a group of languages spoken in the Caucasus region, chiefly in Russia , Georgia , and Turkey, with smaller communities scattered throughout the Middle East....
, are suffix

Suffix

In grammar, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the grammatical conjugation of verbs....
es rather than independent words.

Chechen also presents interesting challenges for lexicography, as creating new words in the language relies on fixation of whole phrases rather than adding to the end of existing words or combining existing words. It can be difficult to decide which phrases belong in the dictionary, because the language's grammar does not permit the borrowing of new verb

Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
al morphemes to express new concepts. Instead, the verb dan (to do) is combined with nominal phrases to correspond with new concepts imported from other languages.

Alphabets

Numerous inscriptions in the Georgian alphabet

Georgian alphabet

The Georgian alphabet is the writing system currently used to write the Georgian language and other South Caucasian languages , and occasionally other languages of the Caucasus ....
are found in mountainous Chechnya, but they are not necessarily in Chechen. Later the Arabic alphabet

Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet is the writing system used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic language, Persian language, and Urdu language....
was introduced for Chechen, along with Islam. It was first reformed during the reign of Imam Shamil

Imam Shamil

Imam Shamil was an Caucasian Avars political and religious leader of the Muslim tribes of the Northern Caucasus. He was a leader of anti-Russian Empire resistance in the Caucasian War and was the third Imam of Dagestan and Chechnya ....
and then in 1910, 1920 and 1922.

At the same time, the alphabet devised by Peter von Uslar

Peter von Uslar

Baron Peter von Uslar Peter von Uslar was born in Kurovo manor in Tver Guberniya, Russian Empire. He graduated from the General Staff Academy and did not have formal education in linguistics....
, consisting of Cyrillic, Latin, and Georgian letters, was used for academic purposes. In 1911 it too was reformed but never gained popularity among the Chechens themselves.

The Latin alphabet was introduced in 1925. It was unified with Ingush in 1934, but abolished in 1938.

In 1938-1992, only the Cyrillic alphabet was used for Chechen.

Cyrillic	Name	Mod. Latin	Name
? ?	?	A a	a
?? ??	??	Ä ä	ä
? ?	??	B b	be
? ?	??	V v	ve
? ?	??	G g	ge
?I ?I	?I?	G g	ga
? ?	??	D d	de
? ?	?	E e	e
? ?	?	yo
? ?	??
? ?	??	Z z	ze
? ?	?	I i	i
?? ??		Ii ii
? ? (?, ?, ?)	???? ?	Y y	doca i
? ?	?	K k	ka
??? ???		Kk kk
?? ??	??	Q q	qa
???? ????		Qq qq
?? ??	???
?I ?I	?I?	Kh kh	kha
? ?	??	L l	el
? ?	??	M m	em
? ?	??	N n	en
? ?	?	O o	o
?? ??	??	Ö ö	ö
? ?	??	P p	pe
?? ??		Pp pp
?I ?I	?I?	Ph ph	pha
? ?	??	R r	er
??I ??I		Rh rh
? ?	??	S s	es
?? ??		Ss ss
? ?	??	T t	te
?? ??		Tt tt
?I ?I	?I?	Th th	tha
? ?	?	U u	u
?? ??		Uu uu
?? ??	??	Ü ü	ü
? ?	??	F f	ef
? ?	??	X x	xa
?? ??	???
?I ?I	?I?	H h	ha
? ?	??	C c	ce
?I ?I	?I?	C c	ce
? ?	??	Ç ç	çe
?I ?I	?I?
? ?	??	S s	sa
? ?	??
(?) ?	?I??I? ??????	? ?
(?) ?	?
(?) ?	?I??? ??????
? ?	?	E e	e
? ?	?	yu
?? ??	??	yü
? ?	?	ya
?? ??	??	yä
I I	I?	J j	ja

The glottal stop

Glottal stop

The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound which is used in many Speech communication languages....
is often omitted when writing.

In 1992, a new Latin Chechen alphabet was introduced, but after the defeat of the secessionist government, the Cyrillic alphabet was restored.

Vocabulary

There are borrowings from Russian

Russian language

Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe....
, Turkic languages

Turkic languages

The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean Sea to Siberia and Western China, and are sometimes considered to be part of the proposed Altaic languages....
(mostly from Kumyk

Kumyk language

Kumyk is a Turkic languages, spoken by about 365,000 speakers in the Dagestan republic of Russian Federation.Yir?i Qazaq is usually considered to be a founder of Kumyk literature....
), Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
, Persian

Persian language

Georgian language

Georgian is the official language of Georgia , a country in the Caucasus .Georgian is the primary language of about 3.9 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad ....
.

History

Before the Russian conquest, most writing in Chechnya consisted of Islamic texts and clan histories, written usually in Arabic but sometimes also in Chechen using Arabic script. Those texts were largely destroyed by Soviet authorities in 1944. The Chechen literary language was created after the October Revolution, and the Latin alphabet

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
began to be used instead of Arabic for Chechen writing in the mid-1920s. In 1938, the Cyrillic alphabet

Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic alphabet is a family of alphabets, subsets of which are used by five Slavic languages national languages as well as non-Slavic . It is also used by many other languages of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Siberia and other languages in the past....
was adopted, in order to tie the nation closer to Russia. With the declaration of the Chechen republic in 1992, some Chechen speakers returned to the Latin alphabet.

The Chechen diaspora in Jordan

Jordan

Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is an Arab country in Southwest Asia spanning the southern part of the Syrian Desert down to the Gulf of Aqaba....
, Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in southwest Asia and Thrace in the Balkans region of Southern Europe....
, and Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is an Arab-majority country in Southwest Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Israel to the southwest, Jordan to the south, Iraq to the east, and Turkey to the north....
is fluent but generally not literate in Chechen except for individuals who have made efforts to learn the writing system, and of course the Cyrillic alphabet is not generally known in these countries.

The choice of alphabet in Chechen is politically significant (as Russia

Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
prefers the use of the Cyrillic alphabet

Cyrillic alphabet

Chechen Republic of Ichkeria

The Chechen Republic of Ichkeria is the unrecognized secessionist government of Chechnya. Chechnya is located in the Northern Caucasus mountains and borders Stavropol Krai to the northwest, the republic of Dagestan to the northeast and east, Georgia to the south, and the republics of Ingushetia and North Ossetia to the west....
preference for Latin).

External links

in Russian.
Wealth of linguistic information.
incl. sound file
with Russian explanations