Kumyk language


Kumyk is a Turkic language, spoken by about 426,212 speakers — the Kumyks — in the Dagestan, North Ossetia and Chechen republics of the Russian Federation.

Origin

Kumyk is a part of Kipchak-Cuman language subfamily of the Kipchak family of the Turkic languages. It's a descendant of the Khazar languages. The closest languages to Kumyk are Karachay-Balkar, Crimean Tatar and Karaim.
The Kumyk language formed during the 7th-10th centuries out of Khazar and Bulgar substrata and mixed afterwards with Oghuz and Kipchak.
Based on his research on a famous scripture Codex Cimanicus, Nikolay Baskakov included Kumyk, Karachai-Balkar, Crimean Tatar, Karaim and Mamluk Kipchak in the Cuman-Kipchak family. Samoylovich also considered Cuman-Kipchak close to Kumyk and Karachai-Balkar.

Lingua franca in the Caucasus

Kumyk was a lingua franca in part of the Northern Caucasus from Dagestan to Kabarda until the 1930s.
In 1848, Timofey Makarov, a professor of "Caucasian Tatar", published the first grammar of the language.

Figures and press

is usually considered to be the greatest poet of the Kumyk language. The first regular Kumyk newspapers and magazines appeared in 1917–18 under the editorship of Kumyk poet, writer, translator, and theatre figure Temirbolat Biybolatov. Currently, the newspaper Ёлдаш, the successor of the Soviet-era Ленин ёлу, prints around 5,000 copies 3 times a week. More than 90% of Kumyks also speak Russian, and those in Turkey speak Turkish.

Phonology

† къ represents at the beginning of words, and elsewhere.

Orthography

Kumyk has been used as a literary language in Dagestan and Caucasus for some time. During the 20th century the writing system of the language was changed twice: in 1929, the traditional Arabic script was first replaced by a Latin script at first, which was then replaced in 1938 by a Cyrillic script.

Latin based alphabet (1927–1937)

Cyrillic based alphabet (since 1937)