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Khinalug language

Khinalug (also spelled Khinalig, Khinalugi, Xinalug(h), Xinaliq or Khinalugh) is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by about 3,000 people in the villages of Khinalug and Gülüstan, Quba in the mountains of Quba Rayon, northern Azerbaijan. It forms its own independent branch within the Northeast Caucasian language family.[2]

Khinalug is endangered,[3] and classified as "severely endangered" by UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.[4]

History

Khinalug is the language of the village Khinalug in the Quba district of Azerbaijan. It has been tentatively classified by previous researchers as a member of the Lezgian family of the Dagestani branch of Northeast Caucasian languages[5] Although Khinalug is the official language of the village, it is mostly spoken by villagers in informal circumstances, while the national language Azerbaijani is used formally for educational purposes and to communicate with non-Khinalug speakers.[5] Khinalug is considered to be a threatened language. In recent years, the road leading to the villages where it is spoken has fallen into disrepair, leaving the area mostly isolated.[6]

Phonology

The Khinalug language previously had its own script. Alexander Kibrik and a team of 13 linguists from Moscow State University visited the village in 2005.[7] In 2007 they developed a Latin orthography for Khinalug, in collaboration with local school teachers in the village. It is presented in angle brackets on the tables below.

Consonants


1 The cedilla in the orthography is in the middle of the bottom of the <z>, as is typical of Russian linguistics.

2 Kh and gh are rare.

3 Kx is very rare.

4 The pharyngeal sounds mostly appear in Arabic loanwords.

Vowels

[8]Khinalug has nine vowels and four diphthongs.

Diphthongs include: [iu] [ui] [oe] [oa].

Vocabulary

The following words were phonetically transcribed from Khinalug:[10]

Note: ı is roughly pronounced as the e in "fallen". u is roughly pronounced as the ou in "coup".

Alphabet

See also

References

  1. ^ Khinalug at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ Family tree of Northeast Caucasian languages at Ethnologue
  3. ^ Published in: Encyclopedia of the world’s endangered languages. Edited by Christopher Moseley. London & New York: Routledge, 2007. 211–280.
  4. ^ UNESCO Interactive Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger Archived 2009-02-22 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ a b Clifton, John M.; Deckinga, Gabriela; Lucht, Laura; Mak, Janfer; Tiessen, Calvin (2005). The Sociolinguistic Situation of the Khinalug In Azerbaijan (Report). Archived from the original on 2014-09-07.
  6. ^ Schulze, Wolfgang (Winter 2003). "Xinalugsko-russkij slovar' [Khinalug-Russian Dictionary] (Faida Abubakarovna Ganieva)". Anthropological Linguistics. 45 (4): 450. JSTOR 30028912. The village of Khinalug is difficult to access, although in 1970 a road was constructed that links the village and the regional center. Nevertheless, the road is by now in very bad shape. As a result, a renewed tendency towards partial isolation of Khinalug can be observed.
  7. ^ Ivchenko, Valery (September 4, 2006). "Забытый в горах Кетш – Forgotten in the mountains of Qetsh". Vokrug sveta. Archived from the original on 17 Mar 2023.
  8. ^ a b Kodzasov, S.V., et al., 2007. Khinalug language alphabet (in: Russian).
  9. ^ Khvtisiashvili, Tamrika (2013). Principal aspects of Xinaliq phonology and morphosyntax. University of Utah.
  10. ^ Lubotsky, Alexander; de Vaan, Michiel (2010). Van Sanskriet tot Spijkerschrift: Breinbrekers uit alle talen [From Sanskrit to Cuneiform: Brain teasers from all languages] (in Dutch). Amsterdam University Press. pp. 12, 58–59. ISBN 978-9089641793. Archived from the original on 2016-10-11. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
  11. ^ "Alphabet – xinaliq". Archived from the original on 3 August 2018.

Further reading

External links

Khinalug language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator