Avar Language

Авар мацӀ

ВорчӀами!

● Avar is a region of Dagestan whose population spreads to Azerbaijan, shown here as region 7

● Dagestan has 6 literary languages including Avar which has more than 780,000 speakers worldwide.

Avar

Avar Language

● Cyrillic alphabet (has a history of Georgian and Arabic alphabet too)

● Avar is an ergative language● The Caucasian Avar language possibly has

some affinity with ancient Mesopotamian agglutinative languages like Hurrian, Sino-Tibetan and Ket

● Belongs to Avar-Andi-Tsez subgroup of the Alarodian Northeast Caucasian (or Nakh-Dagestanian) language family

Northeast Caucasion Languages

Schulze (2009)

East Caucasian Language family

Latest attempt at internal classification. (Schulze (2009))

Traditional classification

The Avar-Andic-Tsezic Languages are spoken in the Northwest Dagestan highlands and western Dagestan.

Avar is the lingua franca for these languages, and the only literary language.

Dialects of Avar● There are two main dialect groups:● The northern, which includes Khunzakh,

Kazbek, Gunib, Gumbet and others;● The southern, which includes Andalal, Gidatl',

Antsukh, Charoda, Tlyarata, Cumada, Cunta and others.

● Avar has fifteen spoken dialects: Avar, Bagulal, Chamalal, Budukh, Botlikh, Andi, Godoberi, Tindi, Karati, Akhvakh, Dido, Khvarshi, Ginukh, Hunzib, and Bezhiti, each named after its speaking tribe.

ReferencesSCHULZE, Wolfgang (2009), "The Languages of the Caucasus"