The Abaza language is a Northwest Caucasian languagespoken by Abazins in Russia and many of the exiled communities in Turkey. In fact the languagehas gone through several different orthographies based primarily on Arabic, Roman, and Cyrillic letters. Its consonant to vowel ratio is remarkably high; making it quite similar to many other languages from the same parent chain. The language evolved during its popularity in the mid to late 1800s and eventually started to die out. Abaza is spoken by approximately 35,000 people in Russia, where it is written in a Cyrillic alphabet, as well as another 10,000 in Turkey, where the Latin script is used. It consists of two dialects, the Ashkherewa dialect and the T'ap'anta dialect, which is the literary standard. The language also consists of five sub dialects known as Psyzh-Krasnovostok, Abazakt, Apsua, Kubin-Elburgan and Kuvin. Abaza, like its relatives in the family of Northwest Caucasian languages, is a highly agglutinative language. For example, the verb in the English sentence "He couldn't make them give it back to her" contains four arguments : he, them, it, to her. Abaza marks arguments morphologically, and incorporates all four arguments as pronominal prefixes on the verb. The Abaza language contains two dialects in accordance to the Tapanta and Shkaraua familial districts. The subdialects include Abazakt, Apsua, Kubin-Elburgan, Kuvin and Psyzh-Krasnovostok. It has a large consonantal inventory coupled with a minimal vowel inventory. It is very closely related to Abkhaz, but it preserves a few phonemes which Abkhaz lacks, such as a voiced pharyngeal fricative. Work on Abaza has been carried out by W. S. Allen, Brian O'Herin, and John Colarusso.
History
The Abaza language has slowly died out. Different forms of cultural annihilation contributed to its fall, in areas of Russia, and over time its overall endangerment. The language can be broken into 5 different dialects and has several unique grammatical approaches to languages. The Abaza Language was at its peak usage in the mid to late 1800s. Abaza speakers along the Greater and Lesser Laba, Urup, and Greater and Lesser Zelenchuk rivers are from a wave of migrants in the 17th to 18th centuries who represent the Abaza speakers of today. The end of the Great Caucasian War in 1864 provided Russia with power and control of the local regions and contributed to the decrease in the popularity of pre-existing local languages prior to the war.
Geographic distribution
The Abaza language is spoken in Russia and Turkey. Although it is endangered, it is still spoken in several regions across Russia. These include Kara-Pago, Kubina, Psikh, El'burgan, Inzhich-Chukun, Koi-dan, Abaza-Khabl', Malo-Abazinka, Tapanta, Krasnovostochni, Novokuvinski, Starokuvinski, Abazakt and Ap-sua.
Phonology
The vowels may have a in front of it. The vowels and and and are allophones of and before palatalized and labialized consonants respectively. The vowels,,, and can also occurs as variants of the sequences,, and.
Front
Central
Back
Close
Mid
Open
Orthography
Since 1938, Abaza has been written with the version of the Cyrillic alphabet shown below.
