Svan language

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Svan language

The Svan language (????? ???/???¨?, lušnu nin/š?än; , svanuri ena) is a language spoken in Northwest Georgia

Georgia (country)

Georgia is a transcontinental country in the Caucasus region, located at the dividing line between Europe and Asia. It is bordered by the Russia to the north, Azerbaijan to the east, Armenia to the south, and Turkey to the southwest....
.

Distribution
Svan is the native language of about 30,000 Svans, an ethnic subdivision of the Georgian people, living in the mountains of Svaneti

Svaneti

Svaneti or Svanetia is a historic province in Georgia , in the northwestern part of the country. It is inhabited by the Svan people, an ethnic subgroup of the Georgians....
, i.e. in the districts of Mestia

Mestia

Mestia is a highland townlet in northwest Georgia , at an elevation of 1.500 meters in the Caucasus Mountains....
and Lentekhi

Lentekhi

Lentekhi is a small town and Lentekhi District's capital in Georgia 's western region of Racha-Lechkhumi and Kvemo Svaneti, 323 km northwest to the nation's capital Tbilisi....
of Georgia, along the Enguri, Tskhenistskali and Kodori

Kodori River

The Kodori is the second largest river of Abkhazia, de jure an autonomous republic of Georgia . It is formed by the merger of the rivers Sak'en and Gwandra....
rivers. Some Svan speakers live in the autonomous republic of Abkhazia

Abkhazia

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Encyclopedia

The Svan language (????? ???/???¨?, lušnu nin/š?än; , svanuri ena) is a language spoken in Northwest Georgia

Georgia (country)

Distribution

Svan is the native language of about 30,000 Svans, an ethnic subdivision of the Georgian people, living in the mountains of Svaneti

Svaneti

Mestia

Mestia is a highland townlet in northwest Georgia , at an elevation of 1.500 meters in the Caucasus Mountains....
and Lentekhi

Lentekhi

Kodori River

Abkhazia

Abkhazia is a disputed region on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. Since its declaration of independence from Georgia in 1991 during the Georgian?Abkhaz conflict, it is governed by the International recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia Republic of Abkhazia....
; although conditions there make it difficult to reliably estimate their numbers, they are thought to number only around 2,500 individuals.

The language is used in familiar and casual social communication. It has no written standard or official status; most speakers also speak Georgian, the country's official language, and use it as their literary and business language. There is no official instruction in Svan, and the number of speakers is declining due to the dispersal of the Svan population in the face of increasing economic hardship. The language is regarded as being endangered, as proficiency in it is limited among young people.

History

Svan is the most differentiated member of the four South Caucasian

South Caucasian languages

The South Caucasian languages are spoken primarily in Georgia , with smaller groups of speakers in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia and Israel....
(Kartvelian) languages, and is not intelligible with the other three (Georgian, Laz

Laz language

The Laz language is spoken by the Laz people on the Southeast shore of the Black Sea. It is estimated that there are between around 30,000 native speakers of Laz in Turkey, in a strip of land extending from Melyat to the Georgian border , and about 2,000 in Georgia ....
, and Mingrelian). Svan is believed to have separated from them in the 2nd millennium BC or earlier, about one thousand years before Georgian branched off from the other two.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Dental Dental consonant In linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages....	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate . Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex consonant....	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....	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....
Stop Stop consonant A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms....	? ? ?	? ? ?		? ? ?	? ?	?
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...	? ?	? ?	? ?	? ?		?
Affricate Affricate consonant Affricate consonants begin as stop consonants but release as a fricative consonant rather than directly into the following vowel....		? ? ?	? ? ?
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....	?	?
Liquid Liquid consonant Liquid consonants, or liquids, are trill consonants, tap consonant, or approximant consonants that are not classified as semivowels because they do not correspond phonetically to specific vowels ....		?, ?	?	?

Vowels

	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....				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....		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....
	unrounded		rounded		unrounded		rounded
	short	long	short	long	short	long	short	long
Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....	[ ] ? i	[ ] ?¯ i	[ ] ?¨ ü	[ ] ?¯¨ u			[ ] ? u	[ ] ?¯ u
Close-mid Close-mid vowel A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from a close vowel to a mid vowel....		[ ] ? e			[ ]¹ ? ?
Open-mid Open-mid vowel The open-mid vowels make a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel....	[ ] ? e	[ ] ?¯ e	[ ] ?¨ ö	[ ] ?¯¨ o	[ ]¹ ? ?		[ ] ? o	[ ] ?¯ o
Open Open vowel An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in most spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth....	[ ] ?¨ ä	[ ] ?¯¨ ã			[ ] ? a	[ ] ?¯ a

Bold letters are standard in all dialects.

Freely varies between and
Diacritics not normally written

Features

Familial features

Like all languages of the South Caucasian family, Svan has a large number of consonants. It has agreement between subject and object, and a split-ergative

Ergative-absolutive language

An ergative?absolutive language is a language that treats the Verb argument of an intransitive verb like the Object of a transitive verb, but distinctly from the agent of a transitive verb....
morphosyntactic system. Verbs are marked for aspect, evidentiality and "version".

Distinguishing features

Svan retains the consonant (voiceless aspirated stop), and the glides /w/ and /j/. It has a larger repertoire of vowels than Georgian; the Upper Bal dialect of Svan has the most vowels of any South Caucasian language, showing both long and short versions of // plus //, a total of 18 vowels (Georgian, by contrast, has just five).

Its morphology is less regular than that of the other three sister languages, and there are notable differences in verbal inflections.

Dialects

The Svan language is divided into the following dialects and sub-dialects:

Upper Bal (about 15,000 speakers): Ushgul, Kala, Ipar, Mulakh, Mestia, Lenzer, Latal.
Lower Bal (about 12,000 speakers): Becho, Tskhumar, Etser, Par, Chubekh, Lakham.
Lashkh.
Lentekh: Kheled, Khopur, Rtskhmelur, Cholur

Books

Kevin Tuite
Kevin Tuite

Kevin Tuite is a full Professor of Anthropology at the Universit? de Montr?al.Born in South Bend, Indiana, USA, Tuite is a citizen of the U.S....
, Svan. Université de Montréal. ISBN 3-89586-154-5.

External links

(includes audio/video samples).