The Caucasian languages comprise 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 The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...

and the

Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, described as the List of lakes by area, world's largest lake and usually referred to as a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, ...

. Linguistic comparison allows the classification of these languages into several different

language families A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ana ...

, with little or no discernible affinity to each other. However, the languages of the Caucasus are sometimes mistakenly referred to as a ''family'' of languages.Tuite, Kevin. (1999). The myth of the Caucasian Sprachbund: The case of ergativity. Lingua. 108. 1-29

/ref> According to Asya Pereltsvaig, "grammatical differences between the three groups of languages are considerable. ..These differences force the more conservative historical linguistics to treat the three language families of the Caucasus as unrelated."

Families indigenous to the Caucasus

Three of these families have no current indigenous members outside the Caucasus, and are considered indigenous to the area. The term Caucasian languages is generally restricted to these families, which are spoken by about 11.2 million people. * Kartvelian, also known as the South Caucasian or Iberian language family, with a total of about 4.3 million speakers. Includes Georgian, the official language of

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

, with four million speakers, Svan with 14,000 speakers, Mingrelian with 345,000 speakers, and Laz with 22,000 speakers. * Northeast Caucasian, also called the Nakh-Daghestanian or Caspian family, with a total of about 4.3 million speakers. Includes Chechen with 1.7 million speakers, Avar with 1 million speakers, Dargwa with 590,000 speakers, Ingush with 500,000 speakers, Lezgian with 800,000 speakers, and others. * Northwest Caucasian, also called the Abkhazo-Adyghean, Circassian, or Pontic family, with a total of about 2 million speakers. Includes Kabardian, with one million speakers, Adyghe with 610,000 speakers, Abkhaz with 190,000 speakers, and Abaza with 85,000 speakers. The Northeast and Northwest Caucasian families are notable for their high number of

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

phonemes A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...

(inventories range up to the 80–84 consonants of Ubykh). The consonant inventories of the South Caucasian languages, however, are not nearly as extensive, ranging from 28 (Georgian) to 32 ( Svan) – comparable to languages like Russian (up to 37 consonant phonemes, depending on definition),

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

(28 phonemes), and Western European languages (often more than 20 phonemes). The autochthonous languages of the Caucasus share some areal features, such as the presence of

ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a Airstream mechanism#Glottalic initiation, glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with Aspirat ...

s and a highly agglutinative structure, and, with the sole exception of Mingrelian, all of them exhibit a greater or lesser degree of ergativity. Many of these features are shared with other languages that have been in the Caucasus for a long time, such as Ossetian (which has ejective sounds but no ergativity).

External relations

Since the birth of comparative linguistics in the 19th century, the riddle of the apparently isolated Caucasian language families has attracted the attention of many scholars, who have endeavored to relate them to each other or to languages outside the Caucasus region.Schulze, Wolfgang. "11. The comparative method in Caucasian linguistics". ''Volume 1 Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics'', edited by Jared Klein, Brian Joseph and Matthias Fritz, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2017, pp. 105-114

/ref> The most promising proposals are connections between the Northeast and Northwest Caucasian families and each other or with languages formerly spoken in

Anatolia Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

and northern

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...

.Arkadiev, Peter & Maisak, Timur. (2018). Grammaticalization in the North Caucasian languages

/ref>

North Caucasian languages

Linguists such as Sergei Starostin see the Northeast (Nakh-Dagestanian) and Northwest (Abkhaz–Adyghe) families as related and propose uniting them in a single North Caucasian family, sometimes called Caucasic or simply Caucasian. This theory excludes the South Caucasian languages, thereby proposing two indigenous language families.Nikolayev, S., and S. Starostin. 1994 ''North Caucasian Etymological Dictionary''. Moscow: Asterisk Press
Available online
While these two families share many similarities, their morphological structure, with many

morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...

s 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.

Ibero-Caucasian languages

There are no known affinities between the South Caucasian and North Caucasian families. Nevertheless, some scholars have proposed the single name Ibero-Caucasian for all the Caucasian language families, North and South, in an attempt to unify the Caucasian languages under one family.

Hattic

Some linguists have claimed affinities between the Northwest Caucasian (Circassian) family and the extinct Hattic language of central Anatolia. See the article on

Northwest Caucasian languages The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes Pontic languages (from Ancient Greek, ''pontos'', referring to the Black Sea, in contrast to the Northeast Caucasian ...

for details.

Alarodian

Alarodian is a proposed connection between Northeast Caucasian and the extinct Hurro-Urartian languages of

Dené–Caucasian macrofamily

Linguists such as Sergei Starostin have proposed a Dené–Caucasian macrofamily, which includes the North Caucasian languages together with

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

, Burushaski, Na-Dené, Sino-Tibetan, and Yeniseian. This proposal is rejected by most linguists.

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.

Indo-European

The predominant

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

language in the Caucasus is

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...

, spoken by the

Armenians Armenians (, ) are an ethnic group indigenous to the Armenian highlands of West Asia.Robert Hewsen, Hewsen, Robert H. "The Geography of Armenia" in ''The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times Volume I: The Dynastic Periods: From Antiq ...

(circa 6.7 million speakers). The Ossetians, speaking the Ossetian language, form another group of around 700,000 speakers. Other Indo-European languages spoken in the Caucasus include Greek ( Pontic Greek), Persian (including Tat Persian), Kurdish, Talysh,

Judeo-Tat Judeo-Tat or Juhuri (, , ) is a Judeo-Persian dialect and the traditional language spoken by the Mountain Jews in the eastern Caucasus Mountains, especially Azerbaijan, parts of Russia and today in Israel. It belongs to the southwestern group ...

, and the

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...

, such as Russian and Ukrainian, whose speakers number over a third of the total population of the Caucasus.

Semitic

Two dialects of Neo-Aramaic are spoken in the Caucasus:

Assyrian Neo-Aramaic Suret ( Help:IPA for Aramaic, �suːrɪtʰor Help:IPA for Aramaic, �suːrɪθ, also known as Assyrian, refers to the varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) spoken by Christians, namely Assyrian people, Assyrians.Nordhoff, Sebast ...

, with around 30,000 speakers, and Bohtan Neo-Aramaic, with around 1,000 speakers. Both of these were brought to the Caucasus by ethnic Assyrians fleeing the

Sayfo The Sayfo (, ), also known as the Seyfo or the Assyrian genocide, was the mass murder and deportation of Assyrian people, Assyrian/Syriac Christians in southeastern Anatolia and Persia's Azerbaijan (Iran), Azerbaijan province by Ottoman Army ...

or Assyrian genocide during

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. A dialect of

known as Shirvani Arabic was spoken natively in parts of

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a Boundaries between the continents, transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by ...

and Dagestan throughout medieval times until the early 20th century. In the nineteenth century, it was considered that the best literary Arabic was spoken in the mountains of Dagestan.

Turkic

Several

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic langua ...

are spoken in the Caucasus. Of these, Azerbaijani is predominant, with around 9 million speakers in Azerbaijan and more than 10 million in North Western Iran. Other Turkic languages spoken include Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Nogai, Turkish, Turkmen and Urum.

Mongolic

Kalmyk Oirat, spoken by descendants of Oirat-speakers from East Asia, is a Mongolic language.

Vocabulary comparison

Below are selected basic vocabulary items for all three language families of the Caucasus. :

References

External links

* TITUS: Caucasian language
map by Jost Gippert
& project
Armazi

CIA ethnolinguistic map

language-family map by Matthew Dryer

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20061217214014/http://www.ling.lu.se/persons/Arthur/caucprojreport.pdf The Iberian-Caucasian Connection in a Typological Perspective– An in-depth linguistic study of Basque, Georgian, and other ergative languages, concluding that the similarities are not strong enough to prove a genetic link.
Atlas of the Caucasian Languages with very detailed Language Guide (by Yuri B. Koryakov)

Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian and Indo-European
by V. V. Ivanov
11. The comparative method in Caucasian linguistics
by Wolfgang Schulze
The myth of the Caucasian Sprachbund: The case of ergativity
by Kevin Tuite
The Rise and Fall and Revival of the Ibero-Caucasian Hypothesis
by Kevin Tuite
Grammaticalization in the North Caucasian languages
by Peter Arkadiev and Timur Maisak
Areal Typology of Proto‐Indo‐European: The Case for Caucasian Connections
by Ranko Matasovic
The Northwest Caucasian languages
by Peter Arkadiev and Yury Lander
Mountain of Tongues: The Languages of the Caucasus
by J. C. Catford
“Mountain of Tongues” The Languages of the Caucasus in Arabic-Islamic Sources
by Andrii Danylenko
Routledge Handbook of the Caucasus
by John Colarusso
13 - The Caucasus from Part II - Case Studies for Areal Linguistics
by Sven Grawunder
Ejectives, Altitude, and the Caucasus as a Linguistic Area
by Thomas Wier
The languages of the Caucasus

by Ellen Barry
Caucasian Languages
by Marina Chumakina
Parallel Evolution of Genes and Languages in the Caucasus Region

North Caucasian languages: comparison of three classification approaches
by Valery Solovyev

by Asya Pereltsvaig
Languages of the World: Ibero-Caucasian and Pidgin-Creole Fascicle One
by C. F. Voegelin and F. M. Voegelin on JSTOR
A Case of Taboo-Motivated Lexical Replacement in the Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus
by Kevin Tuite and Wolfgang Schulze on JSTOR
Mountain of Tongues: The Languages of the Caucasus
by J. C. Catford on JSTOR
Languages of the World: Ibero-Caucasian and Pidgin-Creole Fascicle One
by C. F. Voegelin and F. M. Voegelin
A case of taboo-motivated lexical replacement in the indigenous languages of the Caucasus
by Kevin Tuite and Wolfgang Schulze on ResearchGate
From North to North West: How North-West Caucasian Evolved from North Caucasian
by Viacheslav Chirikba
2. The problem of the Caucasian Sprachbund
by Viacheslav Chirikba
Overview of Caucasian languages and Caucasus

Caucasian Language Families

The Caucasians - Cradle of Civilization

Northwest Caucasian Languages and Hattic
on Dergi Park
BASQUE AND CAUCASIAN: A SURVEY OF THE METHODS USED IN ESTABLISHING ANCIENT GENETIC AFFILIATIONS
on repository by the University of Arizona
The History of Basque

Endangered Languages of the Caucasus and Beyond
on IIAS

at Omniglot {{DEFAULTSORT:Caucasus, languages Agglutinative languages