Chechen ( / ˈ tʃ ɛ tʃ ɛ n / CHETCH -en , / tʃ ə ˈ tʃ ɛ n / chə- CHEN ; Нохчийн мотт , Noxçiyn mott , [ˈnɔxt͡ʃĩː muɔt] ) is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by approximately 1.8 million people, mostly in the Chechen Republic and by members of the Chechen diaspora throughout Russia and the rest of Europe , Jordan , Austria , Turkey , Azerbaijan , Ukraine , Central Asia (mainly Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan ) and Georgia .
46-596: The Sunzha (Russian: Су́нжа , IPA: [ˈsunʐə] ; Chechen : Соьлжа , romanized: Sölƶa , IPA: [sɥølʒə] ; Ingush : Шолжа , romanized: Sholʒə ) is a river in North Ossetia , Ingushetia and Chechnya , Russia , a tributary of the Terek . It flows northeast inside the great northwest bend of the Terek River and catches most of the rivers that flow north from
92-519: A glottal stop before a " pharyngealized " (actually epiglottalized) vowel. However, it does not have the distribution constraints characteristic of the anterior pharyngealized (epiglottalized) consonants . Although these may be analyzed as an anterior consonant plus / ʢ / (they surface for example as [dʢ] when voiced and [ pʰʜ ] when voiceless ), Nichols argues that given the severe constraints against consonant clusters in Chechen, it
138-403: A consonant; as a consonant, it has an allophone [ v ] before front vowels. Approximately twenty pharyngealized consonants (marked with superscript ˤ ) also appear in the table above. Labial , alveolar and postalveolar consonants may be pharyngealized, except for ejectives . Except when following a consonant, / ʢ / is phonetically [ ʔˤ ] , and can be argued to be
184-562: A destroyed and no longer existent historical treasury of writings. The Chechen diaspora in Jordan , Turkey , and Syria is fluent but generally not literate in Chechen except for individuals who have made efforts to learn the writing system. The Cyrillic alphabet is not generally known in these countries, and thus for Jordan and Syria, they most use the Arabic alphabet, while in Turkey they use
230-543: A feature of the vowels. However, Nichols argues that this does not capture the situation in Chechen well, whereas it is more clearly a feature of the vowel in Ingush : Chechen [tsʜaʔ] "one", Ingush [tsaʔˤ] , which she analyzes as /tsˤaʔ/ and /tsaˤʔ/ . Vowels have a delayed murmured onset after pharyngealized voiced consonants and a noisy aspirated onset after pharyngealized voiceless consonants. The high vowels /i/, /y/, /u/ are diphthongized, [əi], [əy], [əu] , whereas
276-409: A form of assimilation , the process of one speech sound becoming more similar to a nearby sound. Umlaut occurred in order to make words easier to pronounce. If a word has two vowels, one back in the mouth and the other forward, it takes more effort to pronounce than if those vowels were closer together. Thus, one way languages may change is that these two vowels get drawn closer together. The phenomenon
322-404: A great final step in creating a modified Arabic script that represents Chechen consonants. However, the Arabic alphabet still was not suitable in representing Chechen vowel sounds. Arabic script itself is an impure abjad , meaning that most but not all vowels are shown with diacritics , which are in most cases left unwritten. The process of transforming Arabic script into a full alphabet for use by
368-626: A large number of postpositions to indicate the role of nouns in sentences. Word order is consistently left-branching (like in Japanese or Turkish ), so that adjectives , demonstratives and relative clauses precede the nouns they modify. Complementizers and adverbial subordinators , as in other Northeast and in Northwest Caucasian languages , are affixes rather than independent words. Chechen also presents interesting challenges for lexicography , as creating new words in
414-563: A non-Arabic language has been a common occurrence, and has been done in Uyghur , Kazakh , Kurdish and several more Arabic-derived scripts. Thus a final revision on Chechen Arabic script occurred, in which vowel sounds were standardized. Table below lists the 41 letters of the final iteration of Chechen Arabic Alphabet, as published by Chechen Authorities at the time, prior to 1925, their IPA values, and their Cyrillic equivalents. The single letters and digraphs that count as separate letters of
460-617: A result of long-distance assimilation between vowel sounds. Additionally, the Himoy dialect preserves word-final, post-tonic vowels as a schwa [ə]. Literary Chechen is based on Plains Chechen, spoken around Grozny and Urus-Martan . According to the Russian Census of 2020 , 1,490,000 people reported being able to speak Chechen in Russia. Chechen is an official language of Chechnya . Chechens in Jordan have good relations with
506-454: A specific prefix with which the verb or an accompanying adjective agrees. The verb does not agree with person or number, having only tense forms and participles. Among these are an optative and an antipassive . Some verbs, however, do not take these prefixes. Chechen is an ergative , dependent-marking language using eight cases ( absolutive , genitive , dative , ergative , allative , instrumental , locative and comparative ) and
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#1732772738365552-498: A vowel use when needed to avoid confusions. This modification did not persist in Chechen Alphabet. otherwise, the 1910 iteration of the Arabic script continued being used until 1920. In 1920, two Chechen literaturists, A. Tugaev and T. Eldarkhanov, published a document. In this document they proposed new modifications, which were the addition of two new consonants: These modifications by A. Tugaev and T. Eldarkhanov were
598-453: Is a sound change in which a vowel is pronounced more like a following vowel or semivowel . The term umlaut was originally coined by Jacob Grimm in connection with the study of Germanic languages , as umlaut had occurred prominently in many of their linguistic histories (see Germanic umlaut ). While the common English plural is umlauts , the German plural is Umlaute . Umlaut is
644-499: Is also known as vowel harmony , the complete or partial identity of vowels within a domain, typically a word. For example, in Old High German , the word gast 'guest' had the plural form gesti 'guests': the plural ending -i caused the vowel in the stem to be a front vowel e . This vowel alternation remained in the language, so that present-day Standard German displays the forms Gast [gast] – Gäste [gɛstə], although
690-497: Is followed by a front vowel. The trill / r / is usually articulated with a single contact, and therefore sometimes described as a tap [ ɾ ] . Except in the literary register , and even then only for some speakers, the voiced affricates / dz / , / dʒ / have merged into the fricatives / z / , / ʒ / . A voiceless labial fricative / f / is found only in European loanwords . / w / appears both in diphthongs and as
736-464: Is found in handwriting. Usually, palochka uppercase and lowercase forms consistent in print or upright, but only upper-case ⟨Ӏ⟩ is normally used in computers. In 1992, with the de facto secession of Chechen Republic of Ichkeria from Russia, a new Latin Chechen alphabet was introduced and used in parallel with the Cyrillic alphabet. This was the second time a Latin-based orthography
782-421: Is found. Furthermore, all variants except the ejective are subject to phonemic pharyngealization. Nearly any consonant may be fortis because of focus gemination, but only the ones above are found in roots . The consonants of the t cell and / l / are denti-alveolar ; the others of that column are alveolar . / x / is a back velar , but not quite uvular . The lateral / l / may be velarized , unless it
828-472: Is more useful to analyze them as single consonants. Unlike most other languages of the Caucasus, Chechen has an extensive inventory of vowel sounds, putting its range higher than most languages of Europe (most vowels being the product of environmentally conditioned allophonic variation, which varies by both dialect and method of analysis). Many of the vowels are due to umlaut , which is highly productive in
874-647: Is the Cyrillic alphabet. This script was created and adopted in 1938, replacing the Latin script prior to it. Up until 1992, only the Cyrillic script was used for Chechen. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the de facto secession of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria from Russia, a new Latin script was devised and was used parallel to Cyrillic until the dissolution of the separatist state . Modern alphabet: Lower-case palochka , ⟨ӏ⟩ ,
920-512: Is used for irrigation. Cities that lie on the Sunzha include Nazran , Karabulak , Grozny (the capital of Chechnya), and Gudermes . During the First and Second Chechen Wars , the destruction of petroleum reservoirs caused the Sunzha to become polluted with petroleum. The origin of the name of the river is disputed. The most probable of versions say Sunzha has come from Mongol-Turkic languages in
966-582: The Arabic script was introduced for Chechen, along with Islam . The Chechen Arabic alphabet was first reformed during the reign of Imam Shamil , and then again in 1910, 1920 and 1922. At the same time, the alphabet devised by Peter von Uslar , consisting of Cyrillic, Latin, and Georgian letters, was used for academic purposes. In 1911 it too was reformed but never gained popularity among the Chechens themselves. The current official script for Chechen language
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#17327727383651012-505: The Salishan languages of North America, as well as a large vowel system resembling those of Swedish and German . The Chechen language has, like most indigenous languages of the Caucasus , a large number of consonants : about 40 to 60 (depending on the dialect and the analysis), far more than most European languages . Typical of the region, a four-way distinction between voiced , voiceless , ejective and geminate fortis stops
1058-499: The diphthongs /je/, /wo/ undergo metathesis , [ej], [ow] . Chechen permits syllable-initial clusters /st px tx/ and non-initially also allows /x r l/ plus any consonant, and any obstruent plus a uvular of the same manner of articulation . The only cluster of three consonants permitted is /rst/ . Numerous inscriptions in the Georgian script are found in mountainous Chechnya, but they are not necessarily in Chechen. Later,
1104-399: The Arabic script was well established among the speakers of Chechen. However, the Arabic alphabet, without modifications, would not be suitable for Chechen, and modifications would be needed. The Arabic alphabet underwent various iterations, improvements and modifications for the Chechen language. Within Chechen society, these modifications were not without controversy. The Muslim clergy and
1150-618: The Chechen Republic. The dialects of the northern lowlands are often referred to as " Oharoy muott " (literally "lowlander's language") and the dialect of the southern mountain tribes is known as " Laamaroy muott " (lit. "mountainer's language"). Oharoy muott forms the basis for much of the standard and literary Chechen language, which can largely be traced to the regional dialects of Urus-Martan and contemporary Grozny . Laamaroy dialects include Chebarloish, Sharoish, Itum-Qalish, Kisti, and Himoish. Until recently, however, Himoy
1196-664: The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and are able to practice their own culture and language. Chechen language usage is strong among the Chechen community in Jordan. Jordanian Chechens are bilingual in both Chechen and Arabic, but do not speak Arabic among themselves, only speaking Chechen to other Chechens. Some Jordanians are literate in Chechen as well, having managed to read and write to people visiting Jordan from Chechnya. Some phonological characteristics of Chechen include its wealth of consonants and sounds similar to Arabic and
1242-534: The Latin alphabet. Chechen is the most-spoken Northeast Caucasian language . Together with the closely related Ingush , with which there exists a large degree of mutual intelligibility and shared vocabulary, it forms the Vainakh branch . There are a number of Chechen dialects: Aukh , Chebarloish, Malkhish, Nokhchmakhkakhoish, Orstkhoish, Sharoish, Shuotoish, Terloish, Itum-Qalish and Himoish. Dialects of Chechen can be classified by their geographic position within
1288-544: The alphabet, along with their correspondences, are as follows. Those in parentheses are optional or only found in Russian words: In addition, several sequences of letters for long vowels and consonants, while not counted as separate letters in their own right, are presented here to clarify their correspondences: Chechen is an agglutinative language with an ergative–absolutive morphosyntactic alignment . Chechen nouns belong to one of several genders or classes (6), each with
1334-628: The deformed type. It is known that Mongols called it Suinchie, Russians Sevenz and in the Chechen language its name got corrective type Solchzha. There is also other version that before Sunzha Chechens called the river Okhi «Oh'-hi, Оhhи» that means «downwards the river». Chechen language Before the Russian conquest , most writings in Chechnya consisted of Islamic texts and clan histories, written usually in Arabic but sometimes also in Chechen using Arabic script. The Chechen literary language
1380-407: The dialect. /æ/, /æː/ and /e/, /eː/ are in complementary distribution ( /æ/ occurs after pharyngealized consonants, whereas /e/ does not and /æː/ —identical with /æ/ for most speakers—occurs in closed syllables, while /eː/ does not) but speakers strongly feel that they are distinct sounds. Pharyngealization appears to be a feature of the consonants, though some analyses treat it as
1426-454: The final front vowel has been reduced to the central schwa vowel. The most commonly seen types of umlaut are the following: All of these processes occurred in the history of the Germanic languages ; see Germanic umlaut for more details. I-mutation is the most prominent of the processes, to the extent that it is often referred to simply as "umlaut". Similar processes also occurred in
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1472-505: The history of the Celtic languages , especially Old Irish . In this context, these processes are often referred to as affection . Vowel-raising umlaut occurred in the history of many of the Romance languages , in which it is normally termed Metaphony . This article about Germanic languages is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This phonology article
1518-573: The language relies on fixation of whole phrases rather than adding to the end of existing words or combining existing words. It can be difficult to decide which phrases belong in the dictionary, because the language's grammar does not permit the borrowing of new verbal morphemes to express new concepts. Instead, the verb dan (to do) is combined with nominal phrases to correspond with new concepts imported from other languages. Chechen nouns are divided into six lexically arbitrary noun classes . Morphologically, noun classes may be indexed by changes in
1564-581: The letters ص ( ṣād/sād ) and ض ( zād/ḍād ) had their usage limited to Arabic loanwords but were not eliminated due to opposition from Clergy and conservative segments of Chechen society. In another short-lasting modification, Sugaip Gaisunov proposed adding a overline (◌ٙ) ( U+0659 ) over letters that can be read as either a consonant or a vowel, namely the letters و ( waw ) (equivalent to Cyrillic letter "В" or to letters "О, Оь, У, Уь") and ی ( yāʼ ) (equivalent to Cyrillic letter "Й" or to letter "И"). The overbar signified
1610-644: The modifications in Chechen were done independently from these two nearby and influential literary traditions and were focused on needs of Chechen language. Initially, the Chechen Arabic alphabet looked like this. ي ﻻ ه و ن م ل ڮ ك ڨ ق ف غ ع ظ ط ض ص ش س ز ر ذ د خ ح ج ث ت ب ا In this alphabet, two additional letters were added to the base Arabic script: In 1910, Sugaip Gaisunov proposed additional reforms that brought Arabic alphabet closer to Chechen's phonetic requirements. Sugaip Gaisunov introduced four additional consonants: In Sugaip Gaisunov's reforms,
1656-493: The more conservative segments of Chechen society initially resisted any changes to the Arabic script, with the belief that this script was sacred due to its association with Islam, and was not to be changed. The clergy and Islamic educational institutions opposed each and every iteration of proposed reforms in the Arabic script. While modifications to the Arabic script to match local languages had been common practice for centuries, for languages such as Persian and Ottoman Turkish ,
1702-635: The mountains before they reach the Terek. It is 278 kilometres (173 mi) long, and has a drainage basin of 12,000 square kilometres (4,600 sq mi). The Sunzha rises on the Northern slope of the Caucasus Major . Its major tributaries are the Assa and Argun . With a turbidity of 3,800 grams per cubic metre (6.4 lb/cu yd), it carries 12.2 million tons of alluvium per year. It
1748-469: The prefix of the accompanying verb and, in many cases, the adjective too. The first two of these classes apply to human beings, although some grammarians count these as two and some as a single class; the other classes however are much more lexically arbitrary. Chechen noun classes are named according to the prefix that indexes them: When a noun denotes a human being, it usually falls into v- or y-Classes (1 or 2). Most nouns referring to male entities fall into
1794-467: The prefixes before the nouns indicates grammatical gender; thus: vоsha ' brother ' → yisha ' sister ' . Some nouns denoting human beings, however, are not in Classes 1 or 2: bēr ' child ' , for example, is in class 3. Only a few of Chechen's adjectives index noun class agreement, termed classed adjectives in the literature. Classed adjectives are listed with the d-class prefix in
1840-445: The romanizations below: Whereas Indo-European languages code noun class and case conflated in the same morphemes , Chechen nouns show no gender marking but decline in eight grammatical cases , four of which are core cases (i.e. absolutive , ergative , genitive , and dative ) in singular and plural. Below the paradigm for "говр" (horse). Umlaut (linguistics) In linguistics , umlaut (from German "sound alternation")
1886-764: The standard dialect. None of the spelling systems used so far have distinguished the vowels with complete accuracy. All vowels may be nasalized . Nasalization is imposed by the genitive , infinitive , and for some speakers the nominative case of adjectives . Nasalization is not strong, but it is audible even in final vowels, which are devoiced. Some of the diphthongs have significant allophony : /ɥø/ = [ɥø], [ɥe], [we] ; /yø/ = [yø], [ye] ; /uo/ = [woː], [uə] . In closed syllables , long vowels become short in most dialects (not Kisti ), but are often still distinct from short vowels (shortened [i] , [u] , [ɔ] and [ɑ̈] vs. short [ɪ] , [ʊ] , [o] , and [ə] , for example), although which ones remain distinct depends on
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1932-474: The v-class, whereas Class 2 contains words related to female entities. Thus lūlaxuo ' a neighbour ' is normally considered class 1, but it takes v- if referring to a male neighbour and y- if a female. This is similar to the Spanish word estudiante ' student ' , where el estudiante refers to a male student, and la estudiante refers to a female student. In a few words, changing
1978-527: Was created after the October Revolution , and the Latin script began to be used instead of Arabic for Chechen writing in the mid-1920s. The Cyrillic script was adopted in 1938. Almost the entire library of Chechen medieval writing in Arabic and Georgian script about the land of Chechnya and its people was destroyed by Soviet authorities in 1944, leaving the modern Chechens and modern historians with
2024-547: Was created for Chechen. But after the defeat of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria government by the Russian Armed Forces , the Cyrillic alphabet was restored. The first time that the Latin alphabet was introduced , was in 1925, replacing Arabic alphabet. Further minor modifications in 1934, unified Chechen orthography with Ingush. But the Latin alphabet was abolished in 1938, being replaced with Cyrillic. The first, most widespread modern orthography for Chechen
2070-572: Was the Arabic script, adopted in the 19th century. Chechen was not a traditionally written language, but due to the public's familiarity with the Arabic script - as the script of instruction in the region's Islamic and Quranic schools - the Arabic alphabet was first standardized and adopted for Chechen during the reign of Imam Shamil . Islam has been the dominant religion in Chechnya since the 16th century, and there were 200 religious schools as well as more than 3000 pupils in Chechnya and Ingushetia. Thus
2116-407: Was undocumented and was considered a branch of Sharoish, as many dialects are also used as the basis of intertribal (teip) communication within a larger Chechen " tukkhum ". Laamaroy dialects such as Sharoish, Himoish and Chebarloish are more conservative and retain many features from Proto-Chechen. For instance, many of these dialects lack a number of vowels found in the standard language which were
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