Kabardian language

thumb|Yinal speaking Kabardian.

Kabardian (), also known as , is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken by the eastern subgroups of Circassians. some reject the distinction between the two languages in favour of both being dialects of a unitary Circassian language. Despite phonological differences, Circassian languages are reciprocally intelligible, While the self-designation for both Adyghe and Kabardian language is Adyghe, in linguistic and administrative terms, "Adyghe" refers specifically to the language of the western tribes of Circassians, while "Kabardian" refers to the language of the two eastern tribes (Kabardians and Besleney). The series of labialized alveolar sibilant affricates and fricatives that exist in Adyghe became labiodental consonants in Kabardian, for example the Kabardian words мафӏэ "fire", зэвы "narrow", фыз "wife" and вакъэ "shoe" are pronounced as машӏо , зэжъу , шъуз and цуакъэ in Adyghe. Kabardian has a labialized voiceless velar fricative which correspond to Adyghe , for example the Adyghe word "тфы" ( "five" is тху () in Kabardian. In the Beslenei dialect, there exists an alveolar lateral ejective affricate which corresponds to in literary Kabardian. The Turkish Kabardians (Uzunyayla) and Besleneys have a palatalized voiced velar stop and a palatalized velar ejective which corresponds to and in literary Kabardian.

Consonants

{| class="wikitable" style=text-align:center

|+ Kabardian consonant system

! rowspan="2" colspan="2" |

! rowspan="2" | Labial

! colspan="2" | Alveolar

! rowspan="2" | Post- alveolar

! rowspan="2" | Alveolo- palatal

! colspan="3" | Velar

! colspan="2" | Uvular

! rowspan="2" | Pharyngeal

! colspan="2" | Glottal

|- class=small

! Median

! Lateral

! plain

! lab.

! pal.

! plain

! lab.

! plain

! lab.

! colspan=2 | Nasal

|

! rowspan="3" | Plosive

! ejective

|

| ()1

! voiceless

|

| 2

|

! voiced

|

| 2

|

| ()1

! rowspan="3" | Affricate

! ejective

|

! voiceless

|

! voiced

|

! rowspan="3" | Fricative

! ejective

|

! voiceless

|

! voiced

|

! colspan=2 | Approximant

|

! colspan="2" | Trill

|

</div>

In some Kabardian dialects (e.g. Baslaney dialect, Uzunyayla dialect), there is a palatalized voiced velar stop and a palatalized velar ejective that were merged with and in most Kabardian dialects. For example, the Baslaney words "гьанэ" "shirt" and "кӏьапсэ" "rope" are pronounced in other Kabardian dialects as "джанэ" and кӏапсэ .
Consonants that exist only in borrowed words.

The glottalization of the ejective stops (but not fricatives) can be quite weak, and has been reported to often be creaky voice, that is, to have laryngealized voicing. Something similar seems to have happened historically in the Veinakh languages.

Vowels

Kabardian has a vertical vowel system. Although many surface vowels appear, they can be analyzed as consisting of at most the following three phonemic vowels: , and .

The following allophones of the short vowels , appear:

{|class="wikitable"

! rowspan=2|Feature !! rowspan=2|Description !! colspan=2|Not preceding labialized cons. !! colspan=2|Preceding labialized cons.

! !! !! !!

| [+high, -back] || After laterals, palatalized palatovelars and || || || ||

| [-round, +back] || After plain velars, pharyngeals, , || || || ||

| [+round, +back] || After labialized palatovelars, uvulars and laryngeals || || || ||

| [-high, -back] || After other consonants || || || ? || ?

According to Kuipers,

:These symbols must be understood as each covering a wide range of sub-variants. For example, i stands for a sound close to cardinal in 'ji' "eight", for a sound close to English in "kit" in the word x'i "sea", etc. In fact, the short vowels, which are found only after consonants, have different variants after practically every series defined as to point of articulation and presence or absence of labialization or palatalization, and the number of variants is multiplied by the influence of the consonant (or zero) that follows.

Most of the long vowels appear as automatic variants of a sequence of short vowel and glide, when it occurs in a single syllable:

occurs only in the plural suffix , which does not occur word-initially.
is the only word-initial vowel; analyzing it as makes the language underlyingly universally consonant-initial.
Certain complications involving stress and morphophonemic alternations are dramatically simplified by these assumptions.

Halle finds Kuipers' analysis "exemplary". Gordon and Applebaum note this analysis, but also note that some authors disagree, and as a result prefer to maintain a phoneme .]]

Prior to the 19th century, Kabardian did not have a literary tradition yet, and it did not have a native orthography. At the time, Ottoman Turkish was used as the literary language by Circassians. Starting in the 1820s, efforts at compiling and standardizing Arabic-based scripts were undertaken by various Kabardian literaturists, and by the early 1920s, an officially-adopted Perso-Arabic-based script was in widespread educational and literary use. However, in 1924, Kabardian Arabic alphabet was discarded and replaced with Latin. A second version of Latin script was adopted in 1930. This lasted for another 6 years, and in 1936, Latin alphabet was discarded in favour of Cyrillic. Kabardian Cyrillic alphabet underwent an iteration of modification in 1938, and the 1938 version has been in popular and official use ever since.

The first ever notable attempt at compiling an orthography for Kabardian was conducted by famous Kabardian poet, Sh. Nogma, in 1825. His alphabet consisted of 42 letters, including 15 letters introduced by him, some of which had unusual forms, diverging from the conventional rasm (base of letters which are then used for addition of dots and diacritics). His alphabet thus did not take hold. It is as follows:

{| style="font-family:Arial Unicode MS; font-size:1.4em; border-color:#000000; border-width:1px; border-style:solid; border-collapse:collapse; background-color:#F8F8EF"

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |а

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |б

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |в

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |β

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |г

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |ӷ

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |гᷱ

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |д

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |ҩ

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |е

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |ж

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |з

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |ӡ

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |z

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |һ

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |і

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |ј

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |к

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |қ

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |л

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |м

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |н

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |о

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |п

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |ԥ

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |ԛ

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |ԛᷱ

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |18x18px

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |р

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |с

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |ҫ

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |т

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |ҭ

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |у

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |ф

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |х

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |х̓

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |ц

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |16x16px

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |14x14px|link=Char (Cyrillic)

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |ш

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |ղ

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |ղᷱ

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |ѵ

| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |

Over the decades, the popularity in use of Arabic-derived script increased. In 1881, the poet compiled a standardized Perso-Arabic script for Kabardian consisting of 39 letters. He published various literature and wrote poetry in this version of the alphabet. The Arabic alphabet was gaining universal acceptance and increasing usage among Kabardian Circassians. The alphabet consists of the following letters:A a, B b, C c, Ç ç, Ć ć, D d, E e, É é, F f, Ḟ ḟ, G g, Ǵ ǵ, Ğ ğ, H h, Ḣ ḣ, I ı, İ i, J j, Ĵ ĵ, K k, Ḱ ḱ, Ǩ ǩ, L l, Ĺ ĺ, M m, N n, O o, Ö ö, P p, Ṕ ṕ, Q q, R r, S s, Ś ś, Š š, Ş ş, Ṩ ṩ, T t, Ṫ ṫ, U u, Ü ü, W w, V v, X x, Y y, Z z, Ź ź, '

200px|thumb|1 – modern alphabet, 2 – alphabet of 1930, 3 – Khuranov's alphabet, 4 – Tsagov's alphabet, 5 – Lopatin's alphabet, 6 – Atazhukin's alphabet, 7 – Nogma's alphabet

Cyrillic alphabet

The table below lists the 59-letter Kabardian Cyrillic alphabet. Dighraphs, trigraphs, and a tetragraph are counted as independent letters.

{| class="wikitable"

! scope="col" | Cyrillic

! scope="col" | IPA

! scope="col" | Perso-Arabic (before 1924)

! scope="col" | ADDER transliteration

! scope="col" | BGN/PCGN transliteration