Kabardian (; ; ), also known as , is a Northwest Caucasian language closely related to the Adyghe (West Circassian) language. Circassian nationalists reject the distinction between the two languages and refer to them both as " Circassian". It is spoken mainly in parts of the

North Caucasus The North Caucasus, ( ady, Темыр Къафкъас, Temır Qafqas; kbd, Ишхъэрэ Къаукъаз, İṩxhərə Qauqaz; ce, Къилбаседа Кавказ, Q̇ilbaseda Kavkaz; , os, Цӕгат Кавказ, Cægat Kavkaz, inh, ...

republics of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia (Eastern Circassia), and in

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula ...

Jordan Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...

and

Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...

(the extensive post-war diaspora). It has 47 or 48 consonant

phonemes In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

, of which 22 or 23 are

fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators 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 ...

s, depending upon whether one counts as phonemic, but it has only 3 phonemic vowels. It is one of very few languages to possess a clear phonemic distinction between ejective

affricate An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...

s and ejective fricatives. The Kabardian language has two major dialects: Kabardian and Besleney. Some linguists argue that Kabardian is only one dialect of an overarching Adyghe or Circassian language, which consists of all of the dialects of Adyghe and Kabardian together, and the Kabardians themselves most often refer to their language using the Kabardian term ''Adighabze'' ("Adyghe language"). Several linguists, including Georges Dumézil, have used the terms "eastern Circassian" (Kabardian) and "western Circassian" (Adyghe) to avoid that confusion, but both "Circassian" and "Kabardian" may still be found in linguistic literature. There are several key phonetic and lexical differences that create a reasonably well-defined separation between the eastern and the western Circassian dialects, but the degree to which the two are

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as a ...

has not yet been determined. The matter is also complicated somewhat by the existence of Besleney, which is usually considered a dialect of Kabardian but also shares many features with certain dialects of Adyghe. Kabardian is written in a form of

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking co ...

and serves as the literary language for Circassians in both Kabardino-Balkaria (where it is usually called the "Kabardian language") and Karachay-Cherkessia (where it is called the "Cherkess language"). Like all other Northwest Caucasian languages, Kabardian is ergative and has an extremely complex verbal system. Since 2004, the Turkish broadcasting corporation

TRT The Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT; Turkish : ) is the national public broadcaster of Turkey, founded in 1964. TRT was for many years the only television and radio provider in Turkey. Before the introduction of commercial radio i ...

has maintained a half-an-hour programme a week in the Terek dialect of Kabardian.

Dialects

*East Circassian **Kabardian ***West Kabardian ****Kuban ****Kuban-Zelenchuk (

Cherkes The Circassians (also referred to as Cherkess or Adyghe; Adyghe and Kabardian: Адыгэхэр, romanized: ''Adıgəxər'') are an indigenous Northwest Caucasian ethnic group and nation native to the historical country-region of Circassia i ...

s) *** Central Kabardian ****Baksan (basis for the literary language) ****Malka *** Eastern Kabardian ****Terek ****Mozdok *** North Kabardian ****Mulka ****Zabardiqa (1925 until 1991 ''Soviet Zaparika'') ** Baslaney dialect ( ady, Бэслъыныйбзэ)

Phonology

The phoneme written ''Л л'' is pronounced as a voiced alveolar lateral fricative mostly by the Circassians of Kabardino and

Cherkessia Circassia (; also known as Cherkessia in some sources; ady, Адыгэ Хэку, Адыгей, lit=, translit=Adıgə Xəku, Adıgey; ; ota, چرکسستان, Çerkezistan; ) was a country and a historical region in the along the northeast ...

, but many Kabardians pronounce it as an

alveolar lateral approximant The voiced alveolar lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral approximants is , and the e ...

in diaspora. The series of labialized alveolar sibilant affricates and fricatives that exist in Adyghe became labiodental consonants in Kabardian, for example the Kabardian words ''мафӏэ'' "fire", ''зэвы'' "narrow", ''фыз'' "wife" and ''вакъэ'' "shoe" are pronounced as ''машӏо'' , ''зэжъу'' , ''шъуз'' and ''цуакъэ'' in Adyghe. Kabardian has a labialized

voiceless velar fricative The voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It was part of the consonant inventory of Old English and can still be found in some dialects of English, most notably in Scottish English, e.g. in ''loc ...

which correspond to Adyghe , for example the Adyghe word "тфы" ( "five" is тху () in Kabardian. In the Beslenei dialect, there exists an

alveolar lateral ejective affricate The alveolar lateral ejective affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is (or ), and in Americanist phonetic notation it is (lambda b ...

which corresponds to in literary Kabardian.UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive - Recording Details for Kabardian Baslanei dialect
In the first word list calle

The words "man" and "quarter" are pronounced as and compare to Standard Kabardian and The Turkish Kabardians (Uzunyayla) and Besleneys have a palatalized voiced velar stop and a palatalized velar ejective which corresponds to and in literary Kabardian.

Consonants

# In some Kabardian dialects (e.g. Baslaney dialect, Uzunyayla dialect), there is a palatalized voiced velar stop and a palatalized velar ejective that were merged with and in most Kabardian dialects. For example, the Baslaney words "гьанэ" "shirt" and "кӏьапсэ" "rope" are pronounced in other Kabardian dialects as "джанэ" and кӏапсэ . # Consonants that exist only in borrowed words. The glottalization of the ejective stops (but not fricatives) can be quite weak, and has been reported to often be

creaky voice In linguistics, creaky voice (sometimes called laryngealisation, pulse phonation, vocal fry, or glottal fry) refers to a low, scratchy sound that occupies the vocal range below the common vocal register. It is a special kind of phonation in which ...

, that is, to have laryngealized voicing. Something similar seems to have happened historically in the Veinakh languages.

Vowels

Kabardian has a

vertical vowel system A vertical vowel system is the system of vowels in a language that requires only vowel height to phonemically distinguish vowels. Theoretically, rounding, frontness and backness could also be used in one-dimensional vowel systems; however, ' ...

. Although many surface vowels appear, they can be analyzed as consisting of at most the following three phonemic vowels: , and .Halle, Morris. "Is Kabardian a Vowel-Less Language?" ''Foundations of Language'', Vol. 6, No. 1 (Feb., 1970), pp. 95-103.Kuipers, Aert. "Phoneme and Morpheme in Kabardian", 1960, ''Janua Linguarum: Series Minor'', Nos. 8–9. 's-Gravenhage: Mouton and Co.
/ref> The following allophones of the short vowels , appear: According to Kuipers, :These symbols must be understood as each covering a wide range of sub-variants. For example, i stands for a sound close to cardinal in 'ji' "eight", for a sound close to English in "kit" in the word ''x'i'' "sea", etc. In fact, the short vowels, which are found only after consonants, have different variants after practically every series defined as to point of articulation and presence or absence of labialization or palatalization, and the number of variants is multiplied by the influence of the consonant (or zero) that follows. Most of the long vowels appear as automatic variants of a sequence of short vowel and glide, when it occurs in a single syllable: * = * = * = * = This leaves only the vowel . Kuipers claims that this can be analyzed as underlying when word-initial, and underlying elsewhere, based on the following facts: * occurs only in the plural suffix a which does not occur word-initially. * is the only word-initial vowel; analyzing it as makes the language underlyingly universally consonant-initial. *Certain complications involving stress and morphophonemic alternations are dramatically simplified by these assumptions. Halle finds Kuipers' analysis "exemplary".Halle, p. 98. Gordon and Applebaum note this analysis, but also note that some authors disagree, and as a result prefer to maintain a phoneme . In a later section of his monograph, Kuipers also attempts to analyze the two vowels phonemes and out of existence. Halle, however, shows that this analysis is flawed, as it requires the introduction of multiple new phonemes to carry the information formerly encoded by the two vowel phonemes. The vowel appears in some loan words; it is often pronounced . The diphthong is pronounced in some dialects. may be realised as , as and as . This monophthongisation does not occur in all dialects. The vowels can have the semi-vowel in front of it.

Orthography

The current Cyrillic alphabet is as follows. The preceding Latin alphabet was much like the one for Adyghe. Kabarda latin alphabet

Grammar

Kabardian, like all Northwest Caucasian languages, has a basic agent–object–verb typology, and is characterized by an ergative construction of the sentence.

Example

The following texts are excerpts from the official translations of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt ...

in Kabardian and Adyghe, along with the original declaration in English.

References

Sources

Gordon, Matthew and Applebaum, Ayla. "Phonetic structures of Turkish Kabardian", 2006, ''Journal of the International Phonetic Association'' 36(2), 159-186.
*Halle, Morris. "Is Kabardian a Vowel-Less Language?" ''Foundations of Language'', Vol. 6, No. 1 (Feb., 1970), pp. 95–103.
Kuipers, Aert. "Phoneme and Morpheme in Kabardian", 1960, ''Janua Linguarum: Series Minor'', Nos. 8–9. 's-Gravenhage: Mouton and Co.
*