Creativity of our students | Reports | | Classification of languages ​​in Runet
Primer - the beginning of all beginnings

Genealogical classification languages

I. Indo-European language family
(13 groups or branches)

1. Indian (Indo-Aryan) group
Includes Old, Middle and New Indic languages.
Over 96 living languages ​​in total

1) Hindustani - Indian literary language. It has two varieties: Hindi (official language India);
urdu (state language of Pakistan).
Dead:
2) Vedic - the language of the most ancient sacred books (Vedas) of the Aryans, who invaded India in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC; Sanskrit is the literary language of the ancient Indians from the 3rd century BC. BC. to the 7th century AD Has two forms: epic (the language of the Mahabharata and Ramayana) and classical (formed in the 1st millennium AD).

2. Iranian group

1) Persian (Farsi), Pashto (Afghan) - the state language of Afghanistan, Tajik, Kurdish, Ossetian, Pamir - unwritten languages ​​of the Pamirs.
Dead:
2) Old Persian - the language of cuneiform inscriptions of the Achaemenid era; Avestan - language holy book"Avesta", close to Sanskrit; Median, Parthian, Sogdian, Khorezmian, Scythian, Saka .

3. Slavic group
Slavic languages ​​were formed on the basis of one common language,
the collapse of which dates back to the middle of the 1st millennium AD.

1) Eastern subgroup: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian ;
2) Southern subgroup: Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian (Serbs have a letter based on the Russian alphabet, Croats have a letter based on the Latin).
Dead:
3) Old Church Slavonic (Old Church Slavonic or Church Slavonic).
4) Western subgroup: Czech, Slovak, Polish, Kashubian, Serbian Lusatian (has two adverbs - Upper Lusatian and Lower Lusatian ).
Dead:
5) Polabsky - was common on the banks of the river. Laby (Elbe) until the 17th century.

4. Baltic group

1) Lithuanian, Latvian, Latgalian.
Dead:
2) Prussian - was distributed in East Prussia, due to the forced Germanization of the Prussians, fell out of use in late XVIII in.;
3) Curonian - the language of the population of Courland.

5. German group
Includes 3 subgroups: northern, western and eastern (dead)

1) Northern (Scandinavian) subgroup: Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Farroese;
2) West German subgroup: English, Dutch*, Flemish, German (formed in the 16th century), Yiddish (modern Jewish).

* NOTE. After the text you are reading was posted on the Internet, the following letter was received by the editors of the site:

I would like to draw the attention of the authors of the site to the inaccuracy in the classification of languages. Being a graduate in the Dutch language, with full knowledge of the subject, I argue that it is wrong to speak of "Dutch" and "Flemish" languages. The Dutch and Flemings have a common literary language - Dutch. All major philological reference books and dictionaries, including the Great Explanatory Dictionary Dutch(Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal) - fruit joint work Dutch and Flemish linguists.

6. Romanesque group

1) French, Italian, Sardinian (Sardian), Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Romanian, Moldavian, Romansh - the official language of Switzerland, Creole - crossed with French about. Haiti.
Dead:
2) Medieval Vulgar Latin - Folk-Latin dialects of the early Middle Ages, which, when crossed with the languages ​​of the Roman provinces, became the basis of modern Romance languages.

7. Celtic group

1) Irish, Scottish, Breton, Welsh (Welsh).
Dead:
2) Gallic.

8. Greek group

1) Greek (Modern Greek).
Dead:
2) Ancient Greek; Middle Greek (Byzantine).

9. Albanian group

1) Albanian.

10. Armenian group

1) Armenian.

Dead groups of the Indo-European language family:
11) Anatolian - Hittite, Luvian, Lydian (were common in Asia Minor);
12) Italian - Latin and Umbrian ;
13) Tocharian - Karashahr, Kuchan (known from manuscripts of the 5th-7th centuries found during excavations in Chinese Turkestan in the 20th century).

II. Semitic-Hamitic (Afrasian) language family

1. Semitic group

1) Northern subgroup: Aysor.
Dead:
2) Aramaic, Akkadian, Phoenician, Canaanite, Hebrew (Hebrew). In Hebrew in the II-I millennium BC. e. said the Jews of Palestine. The most important monument of the Hebrew language is the Old Testament (the oldest part - "The Song of Deborah" - refers to the XII or XII centuries BC, the rest of the text - to the IX-II centuries BC). From the beginning N. e. Hebrew, ousted from colloquial use Aramaic, was the language of culture and religion. The beginning of the revival of Hebrew was laid by Jewish writers and journalists of the Haskalah (Enlightenment) period in the 18th-19th centuries. You can read more about this in the article by O.B. Cohen "From the history of the revival of the Hebrew language". In the XX century. Hebrew - the state language of Israel;
3) Southern group: Arab; Amharic - the literary language of Ethiopia; tiger, tiger, harari and others - unwritten languages ​​of Ethiopia.

2. Kushite group
Includes Northeast African languages

1) galla, somali, beja and etc.

3. Berber group

1) Tuareg, Kabil and etc.
Dead:
2) Libyan.

4. Chadian group

1) Hausa and etc.

5. Egyptian group (dead)

1) Ancient Egyptian, Coptic - the cult language of the Orthodox Church in Egypt.

NOTE. Sometimes the Semitic-Hamitic family is divided into two groups: Semitic and Hamitic, which includes all non-Semitic languages. Some scholars believe that there is no relationship between Semitic and Hamitic languages.

III. Caucasian language family

1) Adyghe-Abkhazian group: Abkhazian, Abaza, Adyghe, Kabardian ;
2) Nakh group: Chechen, Ingush ;
3) Dagestan group (5 written languages, 22 unwritten): Avar, Dargin, Lezgin, Lak, Tabasaran ;
4) Kartvelian group: Megrelian, Georgian, Svan .

IV. Finno-Ugric language family

1. Ugric group

1) Hungarian (Magyar), Mansi, Khanty ;

2. Finnish group

1) Baltic subgroup: Finnish (Suomi), Sami (Loparian), Estonian, Karelian, Izhora, Veps, Votic, Liv ;
2) Perm group: Komi-Zyryansky, Komi-Permian ;
3) Volga group: Udmurt, Mari, Mordovian (includes two independent language - erzya and moksha ).

V. Samoyed language family

1) Nenets, Enets, Nganasan, Selkup .

NOTE. Sometimes the Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic language families are combined into a single Uralic language family with two groups: Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic.

VI. Turkic language family

1) Bulgar group: Chuvash ; dead - Bulgarian, Khazar ;
2) Oguz group: Turkmen, Gagauz, Turkish, Azerbaijani ;
Dead - Oguz, Pecheneg ;
3) Kypchak group: Tatar, Bashkir, Karaite, Kumyk, Nogai, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Altai, Karakalpak, Karachay-Balkarian, Crimean Tatar .
Dead - Polovtsian, Pecheneg, Golden Horde .
4) Karluk group: Uzbek, Uighur ;
5) Eastern Xiongnu group: Yakut, Tuva, Khakass, Shor, Karagas .
Dead - Orkhon, Old Uyghur .

VII. Mongolian language family

1) Mongolian, Buryat, Kalmyk, Mughal (Afghanistan), Mongolian (PRC), Dahurian (Manchuria).

VIII. Tungus-Manchu language family

1) Tunguska group: Evenki, Evenki (Lamut), Negidal Nanai, Udei, Ulchi, Orochi ;
2) Manchurian group: Manchurian ;
Dead - jurzhen, sibo .

NOTE. The Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu language families are sometimes combined into the Altaic language family. The Altaic language family sometimes includes a Japanese-Korean group (branch) with Korean and Japanese languages.

IX. Sino-Tibetan language family

1) Chinese group: Chinese, Dungan ;
2) Tibeto-Burmese group: Tibetan, Burmese, Izu, Hani, Lisu, Himalayan and Assamese languages .

X. Dravidian language family
(languages ​​of the pre-Indo-European population of the Hindustan peninsula)

1) Dravidian group: Tamil, Malalayam, Kannara ;
2) Andhra group: Telugu ;
3) Central Indian group: gondii ;
4) Language brahui (Pakistan).

XI. Austroasiatic language family

1) Vietnamese group: Vietnamese ;
2) Mon-Khmer group: Mon, Khasi, Khmer, Senoi, Semangi, Nicobar ;
3) Miao-yao group: meow, yao ;
4) Munda group: munda (India).

XII. Malayo-Polynesian language family

1) Indonesian group: Indonesian (Malay), Javanese, Sundanese, Bali, Dayak, Tagalog (Philippines), malgashian (Madagascar);
2) East Ocean group: Polynesian (Maori, Hawaiian, Samoa, etc.), Micronesian, Melanesian, Papuan languages .

XIII. Paleoasiatic language family

1) Eskimo-Aleut group: Eskimo, Aleutian ;
2) Chukchi group: Chukchi, Koryak, Kamchadal (Itelmen) ;
3) Yukaghir group: Yukagir, Chuvan ;
4) Nivkh group: Nivkh ;
5) Ket group: Ket .
Dead - Kott, Arin, Asan .

Separate languages ​​of the peoples of Eurasia,
not included in any groups

1) Japanese ;
2) Korean ;
3) Ainu ;
4) Baksky (Spain).
Dead:
5) Sumerian ;
6) Urartian ;
7) Elamite ;
8) Hattian .

More about the classification of languages >>>

By the way, our website was visited by Juris Cibuls from Riga and
left a letter on the "Contacts" page, in which he cited
Interesting Facts about the languages ​​of the peoples of the world and
existing alphabets. You can read the letter here

When searching for information on the Internet, you can stumble upon interesting user requests:

A bit of laughter and a couple of jokes on this topic were replaced by a desire to really understand the issue. We tell.

It is not that simple. More than 60 languages ​​are spoken on the territory of the modern Caucasus. Some of them include several dialects. Some languages ​​are related, others are not at all similar to each other. But all the languages ​​of the peoples of Ka Vkaza belong to larger language families. Three such families have no analogues outside the region and are called autochthonous. These include Kartvelian , West Caucasian and East Caucasian families.*

The Kartvelian family includes Georgian, Megrelian, Svan and Laz languages. These languages ​​are spoken in five countries, and the number of speakers exceeds 4 million.**

The West Caucasian (Abkhaz-Adyghe) family includes the Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe and Kabardino-Circassian languages. The Ubykh language also belonged to this family, but for the last twenty years it has been considered dead - according to some sources, the last Ubykh died in Turkey in 1992. Today, the number of speakers of the Abkhaz-Adyghe languages ​​in Russia and Abkhazia is about 800 thousand people.***

As for the East Caucasian (Nakh-Dagestan) family, it is the largest - this includes the Chechen, Ingush, Batsbi, Avar, Lezgin, Tsakhur, Andi, Botlikh, Godoberinsky, Karata, Akhvakh, Chamalin, Bagvalal, Tindian, Tsez, Sagadin, Ginukh , Kapuchinsky, Gunzibsky, Laksky, Bezhta, Khvarshinsky, Dargin, Tsudaharsky, Sirkhinsky, Kaytagsky, Kubachi, Chiragsky, Rutulsky, Agulsky, Archinsky, Tabasaransky, Kryzsky, Budukhsky, Udinsky, Kistsky and some more languages.**** Nakh-Dagestan languages ​​are divided into four branches, and the whole group includes 6 million speakers.***

But that's not all. In addition to the three autochthonous language groups languages ​​are also widespread in the Caucasus, whose “relatives” live outside the region. For example, Karachay-Balkarian, Kumyk, Nogai, Azerbaijani languages ​​are included in Turkic group languages, and Ossetian into Iranian. In addition, in some regions of the Caucasus they speak Talysh, Tat, Kurdish, Pontic, Ukrainian and, of course, Russian is spoken everywhere.

Shed some light on the question of what languages ​​are spoken in the Caucasus, and here are the ten most difficult Caucasian words from readers:

1. Lim (Avar) - water. It seems short, but try to pronounce

2. Chalkychylarybyznykyyladanmydyl (Karachay-Balkarian). We counted 30 letters. The word contains the question: "Are they from our mowers?"

3. Khkhakhakhyari (Lak) - a national dish. Haven't tried it, but they say it's delicious.

4. ZykykIuetsIyryzgedzherezykIyzhyfamygüekyym (Kabardino-Circassian). The person from whom you hear this means that he was no longer able to wriggle out.

5. Khakhakhayenynkhjomad (Ossetian) - defense capability

6. Kalaylamak (Kumyk) - tinker (i.e. solder)

7. Chekakuhili (Georgian) - thunder. It does not look very complicated, but the hieroglyphs Georgian language contain many sounds unknown to us.

Ridge of the great Caucasus mountains extends from the Black Sea to the Caspian. North of them is West Side Eurasian steppe; to the south - a hilly area called the Northern Mesopotamia. Both the steppe and the Northern Mesopotamia have been centers of economic and political power since the Neolithic. All this time they were the channels through which people and languages ​​moved between Asia and Europe. . The Caucasus itself was the main channel through which neolithic revolution, Agriculture, cattle breeding and subsequent technological innovations spread from Mesopotamia to Eastern Europe. The Caucasus is a "biological refuge" zone, where you can meet species that are not found anywhere else, and where there is a unique flora and fauna. Since ancient times, the Caucasus has also been known for its linguistic diversity. It can be called a "linguistic refuge zone" in the sense that there are as many as three separate language families here that are native to the Caucasus, with no related languages ​​anywhere else.

Language research

Indigenous language families of the Caucasus:

• Kartvelian or South Caucasian family, whose age is about 4500 years. This family includes Georgian and its three related languages. The languages ​​of this family are widespread near central and eastern Georgia, at the foot of the mountains or in the southern valleys. The history of Georgian writing dates back to the creation of a specially designed alphabet in the 4th century after Christianity was introduced to Georgia. This alphabet is still in use today. Most Georgians and other Kartvelians are Christians, but some, especially those living further south, identify themselves as Muslims.
• Northwestern Caucasian or Abkhazian-Adyghe (or Abkhazian-Circassian) family of indeterminate age (obviously older than the Romanesque or Slavic families languages ​​and younger than Indo-European, which is about 6000 years old), includes three or four related languages. Structural type this family is not typical for the Eurasian languages. This family spread near the Black Sea coast. Northwest Caucasian speakers are predominantly Muslim. In Turkey and some areas in the Middle East, there are diasporas of speakers of these languages, consisting of the ancestors of emigrants who left the Caucasus after its conquest by Russia in the 19th century. AT varying degrees they keep these languages.
• The Northeast Caucasian or Nakh-Dagestan family is extremely diverse and dates back about 6,000 years. On the related languages this family talk in the central and eastern region Caucasus. Perhaps the separation took place at the foot of the mountains of the southeastern region of the Caucasus, near the Caspian Sea and in Azerbaijan. Islam entered Azerbaijan very early, and from there it spread to the North Caucasus, reaching Chechnya and Ingushetia in the 17-18 centuries. Although the majority of North Caucasian speakers are Muslims, the Udi people (who now live in three villages in Azerbaijan and Georgia and are descendants of another big people who gave rise to the Georgian people) are Monophysite Christians. Significant Chechen-Ingush diasporas live in Turkey and Jordan, descendants of emigrants and deportees after the conquest of the Caucasus by Russia in the 19th century. persons. Here they managed to preserve their language.

There are also non-indigenous languages ​​in the Caucasus:

• Ossetian language belongs to the northeastern branch of the Iranian group of the Indo-European family of languages. The Ossetian language is a descendant of the Alanian group of the Sarmatian language, which was the language Scythian state located on the territory of present-day Ukraine, Southern Russia, Moldova, Southern Urals. The Sarmatian language was widespread in the central part of the Caucasus and probably appeared here in the first millennium BC.
• Karachay-Balkar language, two closely related dialects of the northwestern group Turkic languages. It is currently spoken in the western central highlands northern slope. Most likely, these languages ​​penetrated into the Caucasus after the spread of the Kipchak-Turkic language in the western steppes in early middle ages.
• Kumyk- another Turkic northeastern plain, which also appeared in this region in the early Middle Ages. The Kumyk people may have descended from the Khazars, whose empire stretched from the Volga to the foothills of the Dagestan mountains, but the Kumyk language itself goes back to the Kipchak Turkic language that appeared in the North Caucasian steppes in the Middle Ages.
• Azerbaijan language(Azeri) belongs to the southwestern group Turkic languages, which in the ninth century spread from Central Asia to Iranian-speaking Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani language acquired cultural significance from the time of Persian Empire, Islam appeared here early. Writing in Azerbaijani appeared in the 14th century on the basis of.
• tatsky is the language of the southwestern group Iranian languages, spoken in Azerbaijan and along the coast of the Caspian Sea. It is a descendant of the language of the Iranian-speaking population, which once dominated the territory of Azerbaijan before the arrival of the Turkic tribes here. The language is now spoken by enclaves of Jews, Muslims and Christians.
• Talysh language refers to the northwestern group of Iranian languages, which is spoken today in Azerbaijan. This language is a descendant of the languages ​​that were present in this region before the appearance here Turkic tribes.
• is a separate branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The Armenian language spread to the territories former kingdom Urartu in the seventh century BC Armenia adopted Christianity in 300 after the birth of Christ, and some time later the Armenian alphabet was created as a means for spreading Christianity. The earliest surviving documents in classical Armenian date from the ninth and tenth centuries. It should be noted that the alphabet has been preserved in its original form.
• Ancient Urartian language and its descendant Hurrian used the Assyrian script (cuneiform). The region of distribution of the Urartian language is the territory of medieval Armenia.

Structuraltypeslanguages

Indigenous Caucasian languages ​​are known for their complex system consonants (including glottalized and pharyngeal consonants), complex morphology and ergativity (identical case or other marking of subjects of intransitive verbs and direct objects of transitive; special marking of subjects of transitive verbs). Over the three millennia of its existence in the Caucasus, the Ossetian language has borrowed from its neighboring languages ​​many words, a number of glottalized consonants, and the centralization properties of Western Caucasian vowels. But nevertheless, it lacks traces of pharyngeal consonants, pharyngealization, or ergativity.

All three indigenous Caucasian languages ​​have ergative constructions, but use very different morphologies: the Georgian language indicates its syntactic links using a combination of cases and verbal agreement, mostly prefixed; Chechen language- with the help of cases; and Abkhazian is completely only with a complicated verbal prefix. Abkhaz language also changes its postpositions and dependent nouns, while Georgian and Chechen use Genitive to indicate possession.

Language contacts, bilingualism and verticality

It just so happened that traditionally in the Caucasus there was no common language(lingua franca). On the contrary, bilingualism and multilingualism were observed between neighboring communities. On the present stage until the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the mid-19th century, the pattern was vertical: in the upland villages, many people knew the language(s) of the villages below them, but not vice versa. This was due to the fact that markets and winter pastures were located in the valleys, while the highlands promised less economic advantages.

The male population of the upland villages was nomadic, and possibly most they spent their time in the valleys. It is natural to assume that under such conditions, the languages ​​of the valleys tended to spread in the highland areas, thereby reducing the area of ​​distribution of the highland languages ​​or completely replacing them. At present and throughout known history and prehistory of languages large quantity carriers spread both in the lowlands and in the highlands, continuing to spread in the highlands, expanding vertically; these economically prestigious and/or culturally significant languages spread vertically upwards. The languages ​​with fewer speakers, including a few languages ​​spoken in only one village, are mainly present in the highlands. Such a picture was observed in a small glacial period(late Middle Ages to the middle of the 19th century), period global cooling, in which the highland farms and pastures were unreliable, while the valleys were more favorable.

But there is evidence that the upland communities were formerly larger and more attractive, and their languages ​​spread in the valleys, and that upland communities formed and maintained colonies in valleys. The Chechen-Ingush isogloss and the continuous spread of language families such as Chechen-Ingush, Avar and Lak point to this phenomenon. Basically, the geography, the extent of the distribution of the speech of the communities are compared, and this is explained by verticality, the economy and climate change.

The phrase "Caucasian languages", or "languages ​​of the Caucasus", is meaningful only in geographical significance. We understand by this the languages ​​of people who live in a certain territory - in the Caucasus region. You can come across works or even textbooks in which the phrase "Caucasian languages" is used in a genetic sense, that is, it is understood that these are languages ​​​​between which there is a relationship. AT modern science this point of view is completely outdated.

1. Mountain of tongues

Caucasus - interesting in language territory, primarily because there are a lot of languages, they are very diverse. It was once called the "mountain of tongues", and this expression is still used today. The number of languages ​​spoken in the Caucasus is officially estimated at about 60. In fact, there are more of them, because sometimes we cannot distinguish a language from a dialect. Many dialects should be considered separate languages.

These approximately 60 languages ​​belong to several language families, of which three can be considered autochthonous. Autochthonous are languages ​​that have no obvious relatives outside the Caucasus, which are entirely distributed in the Caucasus, these are the languages ​​of peoples who have lived in the Caucasus for a very long time.

2. Autochthonous language families

There are three autochthonous language families in the Caucasus: Kartvelian, West Caucasian and East Caucasian. These families differ in the number and structure of languages.

The Kartvelian family is distributed in Transcaucasia, mainly in Georgia. It is small in number of languages, but the languages ​​of this family are spoken by several million people, mainly due to the Georgian language, the largest in the family. In addition to Georgian this family three small tongue. These are Megrelian and Svan, which are also spoken in Georgia, and the Laz language, which is mainly spoken outside of Georgia on the southern coast of the Black Sea in Turkey.

The second autochthonous family, common in the Caucasus, is the West Caucasian family, it is also called the Abkhaz-Adyghe. The carriers of this family mainly live in the territory Russian Federation in the North Caucasus in its western part. There are four living languages ​​​​in the family: Abkhazian, Adyghe, Abaza and Kabardian (Circassian). Until quite recently, a fifth language was alive - Ubykh. Its last carrier died in 1992 in Turkey. He was a descendant of the Circassians, who were evicted from Russia after the Caucasian 19th war century, that is, in the 1860s.

Finally, the largest family in terms of the number of languages ​​is the Nakh-Dagestan. It officially has about 30 languages, but it is here that the dialectal variation is greatest, and there are actually noticeably more languages. Its carriers live in Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, partly in Azerbaijan and Georgia.

This may be the most interesting and most famous family precisely because there are a lot of languages ​​in it, they are diverse, many of them are very small, up to the fact that in Dagestan there are many languages ​​\u200b\u200bthat are called one-aul, that is, which are spoken by residents of only one village.

3. Indo-European family in the Caucasus

In addition to the three autochthonous families, so-called non-autochthonous families are also widespread in the Caucasus, that is, those whose representatives mainly live in other places. This is primarily an Indo-European family. First, there are many people in the Caucasus who speak Russian. To Indo-European family includes the Armenian language spoken by Armenia - a whole state in the Transcaucasus, as well as several Indo-Iranian languages, primarily Ossetian and two small languages ​​\u200b\u200b- Tat and Talysh, which are spoken in Southern Dagestan and Azerbaijan.

The languages ​​of all autochthonous families of the Caucasus have rich consonant systems and comparatively modest vowel systems.

In addition, there are many representatives in the Caucasus Turkic peoples. The largest of the Turkic languages ​​is Azerbaijani, there are also several smaller languages: Karachay-Balkarian, Nogai and Kumyk.

Very small and very interesting people, scattered in different places in small groups - the people of the Afroasian family, its Semitic branch. Its representatives are called Aisors, or New Assyrians. Many of them even live in Moscow, but some of their settlements and groups also exist in the Caucasus.

4. Kinship of the Caucasian languages

Many linguists have tried to find a single root in the three autochthonous families of the Caucasus. In particular, in the 1950s, the Iberian-Caucasian hypothesis was very popular, according to which it was believed that all three autochthonous families of the Caucasus were deeply related, they had a common ancestor language. This hypothesis, in particular, was promoted by the famous Georgian linguist Arnold Chikobava, and long time she was very popular. Today, most Caucasian scholars have abandoned it.

In the early 1990s, a completely different hypothesis about the relationship of languages ​​was proved. Its authors are the remarkable comparativeists Sergei Nikolaev and Sergei Starostin. They proved that two North Caucasian families are deeply related, that is, the Abkhaz-Adyghe and the Nakh-Dagestan. The Kartvelian languages ​​have nothing to do with them, but, on the contrary, at a remote level they are related to the Indo-European ones - they are part of the Nostratic macrofamily. Approximately such a point of view on this moment adheres to the majority of Caucasian scholars.

Do the autochthonous Caucasian languages ​​have any common linguistic features? This question can probably be answered in the affirmative, but it should be recognized that there are quite a few such features: the autochthonous languages ​​of the Caucasus are quite diverse.

5. Common features autochthonous Caucasian languages

Many call the speech of the highlanders guttural. Indeed, it can be seen that in the phonetic systems of the languages ​​of all three autochthonous families there are quite a lot of laryngeal consonants, that is, consonants that are pronounced with the help of the larynx are localized in the larynx. There are also many so-called aruptive consonants, in the formation of which the larynx also participates. It is due to this that a special effect of their speech is created.

The languages ​​of all the autochthonous families of the Caucasus have rich consonant systems (the West Caucasian languages ​​are, in this respect, the richest in the world after the Khoisan languages ​​of South Africa) and comparatively modest vowel systems.

Very interesting morphology in all three autochthonous families. This is a synthetic morphology with a lot of grammatical meanings that are expressed within words.

Another feature that can be attributed to the autochthonous families of the Caucasus is a little less certain. We can say that they are characterized not by the nominative-accusative, but by a different sentence structure - ergative, sometimes even active. Even if we consider the most common sentences, the most frequent in speech in any language, these will be sentences with no transitive verb, such as "The boy is running" or "The boy is sleeping", "The boy has fallen", and sentences with a transitive verb where one person performs an action on someone or something else, such as "The boy broke the window", or "The boy broke a tree," or "The boy drew a picture." In Russian and in other European languages it is easy to see that the subject intransitive verb have the same form as the subjects of a transitive verb. That is, in the above examples, the "boy" is everywhere in nominative case, and the object he manipulates, such as "picture" or "tree", is in the accusative case. Languages ​​that are arranged in this way are called languages ​​of the nominative-accusative system, and this is what Indo-European languages ​​are in most cases.

However, there are languages ​​arranged quite differently. In them, in the same sentences, the subject of the intransitive verb, that is, the “boy” in the sentence “The boy is running”, and the object with which something happens in sentences with a transitive verb will have the same case. For example, in the sentence “The boy drew a picture”, this will be the case of “picture”, that is, it turns out that the case of “boy” in the sentence “The boy is running” and the case of “picture” in the sentence “The boy drew a picture”, and “boy”, who "painted a picture" stands in some other, special case - ergative. Such languages ​​are called languages ​​of the ergative system, and they prevail among the autochthonous languages ​​of the Caucasus.

The most interesting, most active direction now is the study of various idioms of the Nakh-Dagestan family.

The languages ​​of the ergative system include almost all the West and East Caucasian languages. Life in the Kartvelian languages ​​is even more unusual. There, as a rule, everyone who acts actively is drawn up in the same case, and everyone who acts passively - in some other case. That is, for example, if “The boy is running” or “The boy broke the window”, then “boy” has one case, and “boy” in the sentence “The boy fell” and the window that is broken has another. Such a sentence structure is called active. It is very rare in the languages ​​of the world and at the same time quite widespread in the Kartvelian languages, that is, in Georgian and its relatives. But it should be said that in the Kartvelian languages active construction sentences are not the only possibility, there are other constructions, Kartvelian languages ​​are very complex and fascinating.

6. Prospects for the study of the languages ​​of the Caucasus

The languages ​​of the Caucasus are quite well studied. The Kartvelian languages ​​are relatively better studied simply because Georgia has long had its own linguistic tradition, which is constantly studying the Georgian language and its relatives. Kartvelian languages ​​are also studied by linguists from other countries.

The most immense material for study in the Nakh-Dagestan family, where there are still many idioms, that is, dialects or some variants of the language, which linguists have not yet studied at all or have done very little. Therefore, it seems to me that the most interesting, most active direction now is the study of various idioms of the Nakh-Dagestan family. This may allow us to solve some diachronic problems, that is, to clarify genetic classification within this family, refine the reconstruction of proto-languages different levels and the parent language of the entire Nakh-Dagestan and then the North Caucasian family.

Highly important direction is the creation of text corpora in different languages. It must be said that the Caucasian languages ​​in broad sense words have already begun to participate in this direction. In particular, the body is well made. Armenian language. Of course, this is a non-autochthonous language of the Caucasus, but nevertheless one of important languages Caucasian region. Work is underway on corpora of many smaller languages. In particular, colleagues are working on the corpus of the Lezgi language and other languages ​​of the Nakh-Dagestan family. But it should be said that the languages ​​of the West Caucasian family are arranged morphologically very complicated way, and the creation of the corpus is difficult task, although necessary.

The state language in Armenia is Armenian, it is spoken by 97.7% of the country's inhabitants. In addition, Yezidi is spoken by Yezidis (1%), and Russian (0.9%). On January 22, 2002, Armenia ratified ... ... Wikipedia

Languages ​​of the world- The languages ​​of the world are the languages ​​of the peoples inhabiting (and inhabiting earlier) the globe. Total number from 2500 to 5000 ( exact figure cannot be determined because the difference between different languages and dialects of one language conditionally). To the most common... Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary

Many languages ​​that have varying degrees dissemination and different status within the US. The US population is currently over 300 million people (excluding the significant number of illegal immigrants). Dominant in the territory ... ... Wikipedia

The languages ​​of the United States of America are many languages ​​that have varying degrees of distribution and different status in the United States. The US population is currently over 300 million people (not counting the significant number of illegal immigrants) ... Wikipedia

A series of articles on the topic of US culture ... Wikipedia

This article contains an unfinished translation from German language. You can help the project by translating it to the end. Georgia has been known since antiquity as one of the most multinational and multilingual countries... Wikipedia

Geographic and historical conditions made the Caucasus region an interesting ethnographic museum. No other area the globe, where, in a relatively small space, such a mass of diverse tribes and multilingual peoples. AT … encyclopedic Dictionary F. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

Not to be confused with Caucasian languages. Caucasian Taxon: geographical association of languages ​​Range: Caucasus Number of speakers: about 8 million ... Wikipedia

Nakh-Dagestan Taxon: family Status: generally recognized Range: east North Caucasus Number of speakers ... Wikipedia

Books

• Languages ​​of the world. Caucasian languages, . This book is the next volume of the multi-volume encyclopedic edition "Languages ​​of the World", being prepared at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The book "Caucasian Languages" describes the languages ​​and dialects of three ...
• Languages ​​of the world. Caucasian languages, . This book is another volume of the multi-volume encyclopedic publication "Languages ​​of the World" (series "Languages ​​of Eurasia"), prepared at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The book "Caucasian languages" ...
• Areal typology of the prefix perfective (based on the languages ​​of Europe and the Caucasus), Petr Arkadiev. This book will be produced in accordance with your order using Print-on-Demand technology. The monograph is the first generalizing typological study of prefix perfectivation -…