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Caucasian languages, history andgeographical distribution
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Caucasian languages, also
called Paleo-Caucasian, or Ibero-
Caucasian, group of languagesindigenous to Transcaucasia and
adjacent areas of the Caucasus region,
between the Black and Caspian seas.
The term excludes the Indo-European(Armenian, Ossetic, Talysh, Kurdish, Tat)
and Turkic languages (Azerbaijani,
Kumyk, Noghay, Karachay, Balkar) and
some other languages of the area, all ofwhich were introduced to the Caucasus
in historical times.
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It is commonly believed that all Caucasian languages have alarge number of consonants. While this is certainly true for mostmembers of the Northwest and Northeast Caucasian families
(inventories range up to the 80
84 consonants of Ubykh), theconsonant inventories of the South Caucasian languages are notnearly as extensive, ranging from 28 (Georgian) to 30 (Laz)comparable to languages like Arabic (28 consonants), WesternEuropean languages (2021), and Russian(3537 consonants).
The autochthonous languages of the Caucasus sharesome areal features, such as the presence of ejectiveconsonants and a highly agglutinative structure, and, with the soleexception of Mingrelian, all of them exhibit a greater or lesserdegree of ergativity. Many of these features are shared with otherlanguages that have been in the Caucasus for a long time, suchas Ossetian.
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Three of these families have no currentmembers outside the Caucasus, and are consideredindigenous to the area. The term Caucasianlanguages is generally restricted to these families,
which are spoken by about 11.2 million people.Kartvelian language family with a total ofabout 5.2 million speakers. Includes Georgian, theofficial language of Georgia, with four millionspeakers, Mingrelian ,Laz language and Svanlanguage.
Northwest Caucasian, also called the AbkhazAdyghe, Circassian, or Pontic family, with a total of
about 2.5 million speakers. Includes the Kabardianlanguage, with one million speakers.
Northeast Caucasian, also calledthe Dagestanian, Nakho-Dagestanian,or Caspian family, with a total of about 3.5 millionspeakers. Includes the Chechen language with 1.5million speakers, the Avar language with 1 millionspeakers, the Ingush language with 500,000speakers, the Lezgian language and others.
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Since the birth of comparative linguistics inthe 19th century, the riddle of the apparentlyisolated Caucasian language families hasattracted the attention of many scholars, who
have endeavored to relate them to each otheror to languages outside the Caucasus region.The most promising proposals are connectionsbetween the Northwest and Northeast
Caucasian families and each other or withlanguages formerly spoken in Anatolia andnorthern Mesopotamia.
External relations
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North Caucasian languages
Linguists such as Sergei Starostin see theNorthwest (AbkhazAdyghe) and Northeast (Nahk-Dagestanian) families as related and propose unitingthem in a single North Caucasian family, sometimescalled Caucasic or simply Caucasian. This theoryexcludes the South Caucasian languages, therebyproposing two indigenous language families. Whilethese two families share many similarities, theirmorphological structure, withmany morphemes consisting of a single consonant,make comparison between them unusually difficult,and it has not been possible to establish a genetic
relationship with any certainty.
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Ibero-Caucasian languages
There are no known affinitiesbetween the South Caucasian and
North Caucasian families.Nevertheless, some scholars haveproposed the single name Ibero-Caucasian for all the Caucasian
language families, North and South,in an attempt to unify the Caucasianlanguages under one family.
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External relations
Alarodian
Some linguists have
claimed affinities between
the Northwest Caucasian(Circassian) family and the
extinct Hattic language of
central Anatolia.
Hattic
Alarodian is a proposed
connection betweenNortheast Caucasian and
the extinct Hurro-Urartian
languages of Anatolia.
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DenCaucasian language
Linguists such as Sergei Starostin have
proposed a DenCaucasian macrofamily,
which includes the North Caucasian languages
together with Basque,Burushaski, Na-
Den, Sino-Tibetan, and Yeniseian. This
proposal is rejected by most linguists.
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Families with wider
distribution
Other languages historically
and currently spoken in the
Caucasus area can be placed into
families with a much wider
geographical distribution.
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Indo-European
The predominant Indo-European language inthe Caucasus is Armenian, spoken bythe Armenians (circa 4 million speakers). TheOssetians, speaking the Ossetic language, form
another group of around 700,000 speakers. OtherIndo-European languages spoken in the Caucasusinclude Pontic Greek, Persian, Kurdish,Talysh, Judeo-Tat, Bukhori and of the Slavic
languages, Russian and Ukrainian, whosespeakers number over a third of the totalpopulation of the Caucasus.
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Altaic
Several Turkic languages are spoken in the
Caucasus. Of these, Azerbaijani is
predominant, with around 9 million speakers
in Azerbaijan. Other Turkic languages spoken
include Balkar, Karachay, Kumyk, Nogai.
Kalmyk, spoken by the Oirat descendant
Kalmyks in the region is a Mongolic language.
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Semitic
The only Semitic language spoken
in the Caucasus is Assyrian Neo-
Aramaic, spoken by around 30,000
speakers, largely living in cities, whofled to Russia from Turkey as the
aftermath of Assyrian Genocide at
the close of the First World War.
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