Abkhazian

- Introduction
Have you ever heard of Abkhazian? If you haven't, don't worry - you are not alone. Called "Abkhaz" by most Encyclopædias, this language is widely spoken in Abkhazia, a breakaway republic unrecognized by foreign governments. Also spoken in Turkey and in Ukraine, Abkhaz belongs to the North Caucasian branch in the Family Tree of Languages. Those who make use of it are the Abazins, Adyghey, Kabardians and the Circassians.

Abkhazian has minor connections with the remaining two North Caucasian families (North Central Caucasian and North East Caucasian, or Daghestanian), and simply no relation with Kartvelian (which is South Caucasian). The aforementioned Abazins, besides Abkhazian, also speak Abaza, which is usually seen by Linguists as a divergent dialect of Abkhaz - although both languages were awarded literary status in the early days of Soviet power in the Caucasus. The "official" - let's put it this way - and main dialects of Abkhaz are (northern) Bzâp and the literary (southern) Abz'âwa. Both are spoken in Abkhazia, which since 1931 has had the status of an autonomous republic within (the former Soviet) Georgia. The designation "Abkhaz" derives from the Georgian ethnonym, though that in turn ultimately comes from Greek.

What's So Special About It Anyway?
Well, Abkhazian is said to be quite difficult to learn. But then again, aren't all languages? Even those which belong to the same family can reveal intricate characteristics, which pertain to them only. I believe all languages are hard to master, since each one of them have their own principles, and until you can have a native-like understanding of their lexics (not only syntactically, but especially semantically) and of their cultural aspects... it takes time - in fact, it can easily take your entire life.

But anyways, Abkhazian makes use of a modified Russian Cyrillic Alphabet. So far, nothing impressive, since Serbian and Ukrainian, for example, also make use of a modified Cyrillic Alphabet. The one pertaining to Abkhazian, though, is said not to be able to fully represent its sounds, which include a wavering trill, whistling noises, and a prolonged buzz (!)...

The language has a vertical vowel-system (namely a two-term open versus close), which can be easily mastered for speakers of Germanic languages, due to the immanence of their incredibly rich vowel system - especially Swedish and Norwegian. The Abkhazian orthography, though, indicates vowel-phones in addition to the two mentioned phonemes.

It is the specially large consonantal inventory that can baffle the learner. The Abkhazian's consonantal cache is made up of the standard Caucasian opposition between voiced vs voiceless aspirate vs voiceless ejective obstruents, with widespread use of the secondary articulatory features of palatalisation and labialisation. One of the main dialects, for example, Abz'âwa, has 58 consonantal phonemes. The other one, Bzâp, reaches the oustanding mark of 67 consonantal phonemes.

The noun-morphology is simple, though, and Abkhaz only possesses one formally marked case, namely the Adverbial. The verb forms are polysynthetic, having the ability to recapitulate almost the entire syntax of the clause - they have a complex system of pronominal cross-referencing affixes that shew agreement with subject and direct, indirect and oblique objects. Also, its verb forms incorporate markers for the normal verbal categories of tense, aspect, mood and causation. Let us take the following sentence to illustrate what has been said:

sara' a-píYâ's a-sap'â'n s-xarp (0-)a-la-l-sâ-r-dZYdZYa'-(0-)jt'

Where:
sara' = I
a-píYâ's = the-woman
a-sap'â'n = the-soap
s-xarp = my-shirt
(0-)a-la-l-sâ-r-dZYdZYa'-(0-)jt' = (it-)it-by- her-I-cause-wash-(PAST-)FINITE

Which could be converted into "I caused the woman to wash my shirt with the soap", or in a more fluent English, "I got the woman to wash my shirt with (the) soap".

Last but not least, the word order. It is predominantly Subject-(Indirect/Direct) Object-Verb, where the possessor precedes that which, or (s)he who is possessed. Most adjectives follow their nouns, and postpositions, rather than prepositions, exist; intransitive subjects and direct objects are marked alike within the verb, leaving transitive subjects to be treated differently - which makes the language Ergative in structure, like Finnish (which was thought to be all built upon the passive voice, since at the time no one really knew what Ergative constructions were). Also, if on one hand a clause is defined as a word-sequence containing a finite verb, on the other hand the subordinate clauses (as in North Caucasian languages generally) are rare to show finite verbs - once non-finite verb-forms are employed, relative pronouns and subordinating conjunctions as separate word-classes become absent. For example:

sara' a-sap'â'n s-xarp (0-)a'-la-z-sâ-r-dZYdZYa-(0-)z' a-píYâ's

Where:
sara' = I
a-sap'â'n = the-soap
s-xarp = my-shirt
(0-)a'-la-z-sâ-r-dZYdZYa-(0-)z = (it-)it-by- whom-I-cause-wash (PAST-)NON.FINITE
a-píYâ's = the-woman

The form "I the-soap my-shirt (it-)it-by- whom-I-cause-wash (PAST-)NON.FINITE the-woman" would then by converted into "the woman whom I got to wash my shirt with (the) soap."

The End
Abkhazian can be fun upon a closer analysis of its vocabulary. Much of it actually preserves concrete images in the form of metaphors; for example, "helping leg" for "staff", and "mother's blood" for "mother's brother". Also, the language is rich in proverbs that guide everyday behavior and values, and the skill of making eloquent speeches is highly prized and cultivated - in fact, it is the primary requirement of any elder or community mediator, people held in the highest esteem in Abkhazian society. Ordinary folk are also expected to be able to make long and eloquent speeches and toasts at family and public events that are a feature of daily life.

Names in Abkhazian? For girls, first common names are Amra, Asida, Gunda, Esma, Naala. Common boys' first names are Adgur, Akhra, Daur, Alkhas, Gudisa. Prominent surnames are Achba, Agrba, Avidzba, Kutsnia (or Kvitsinia), Adleiba, Shamba.

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Sources:
Ethnologue.com
The Republic of Abkhazia
Abkhazians
Abkhazian Language
Web-Samouchitel Abxazskogo Iazika (Abkhazian Language Web-Tutor)
Wikipedia
My Canadian friend zhiguli. :-) (who probably was more involved in it than I was :p)

  ¶ 4:17 PM

  THE BEGINNING OF ALL

I have been studying languages for quite some time. I say languages because I am interested in all of them, although I cannot quite speak any as fluently as I would like.

Nevertheless, browsing through pages, reading books, living amidst people of different cultures and trying to acknowledge the most I could about other languages, I realized that all of them have properties that can indeed be quite frustrating for the learner. Why so?, you ask. Why does the language that I want to learn have to be so difficult? Why does it have such weird constructions?, or Why does it take this preposition, rather than that one? Well, I cannot answer that, but what you can expect to find here is pretty much that which can make you feel like giving up on it, after so many failed attempts into speaking it.

Do not give in, though. I have only tried to look upon the aforementioned remarkable characteristics with a rather jestful point of view, in an effort to, as much as I could, provide a positive outlook on life - since it has dragged us down the drain so many times. Let us just try and look through the spyglass the other way around. Perhaps we will see that life can be funnier than we thought.

I shall therefore start this blog by shortly mentioning Tariana.

Tariana is an endangered Arawak language from a remote region in the northwest Amazonian jungle. Its speakers traditionally marry someone speaking a different language, and as a result most people are fluent in five or six languages. Because of this rampant multilingualism, Tariana combines a number of features inherited from the protolanguage with properties diffused from neighbouring but unrelated Tucanoan languages. Typologically unusual features of the language include: an array of classifiers independent of genders, complex serial verbs, case marking depending on the topicality of a noun, and double marking of case and of number. Tariana has obligatory evidentiality: every sentence contains a special element indicating whether the information was seen, heard, or inferred by the speaker, or whether the speaker acquired it from somebody else. In other words:

In English I can tell my son: "Today I talked to Adrian," and he won't ask: "How do you know you talked to Adrian?" But in some languages, including Tariana, you always have to put a little suffix onto your verb saying how you know something - we call it "evidentiality." I would have to say: "I talked to Adrian, non-visual," if we had talked on the phone. And if my son told someone else, he would say: "She talked to Adrian, non-visual, reported." In that language, if you don't say how you know things, they think you are a liar.

So, if the lingua franca of the world were Tariana, what exactly would this mean for George W. Bush and Tony Blair if they had given speeches about attacking Iraq because they had heard that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? I wonder if there are enough suffixes in Tariana to convey believability in this particular case.

Oh, and by the way... there is even a Tariana Grammarbook.

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Taken from:
1. How to Learn Swedish in 1000 Difficult Lessons
2. Language Log
3. Cambridge: A Grammar of Tariana
4. The Linguist List

  ¶ 10:14 PM