Ubykh language

Ubykh was a special language once spoken by the Ubykh people, who were part of the Circassian nation living along the eastern coast of the Black Sea. Sadly, most of the Ubykh people were forced to leave or lost their lives during a difficult time called the Circassian genocide carried out by Russia.

This language was very unique. It had many sounds made with the mouth and throat, called consonants, with about eighty different ones—more than almost any other language in the world! But it had only two main vowel sounds. The Ubykh people called their language Убыхыбзэ, and it is known by a few different spellings in books about languages.

Major features

Ubykh is a special language with unique traits that it shares with some other languages from the same family.

• It follows an ergative pattern, meaning it does not differentiate between the doer of an action and the receiver of an action in certain sentences.
• It is highly agglutinating and polysynthetic, building words by adding small parts together. Some words can be very long, with up to nine or more syllables.
• It uses a simple system for naming things, with just three ways to show relationships in sentences.
• Its system for showing who does what to whom in sentences is very complex. In English, verbs only need to match the subject, but in Ubykh, verbs must match the subject, the direct object, the indirect object, and even who benefits from the action.
• It also has a rich sound system, with 84 different consonant sounds and only three vowel sounds.

Phonology

Main article: Ubykh phonology

The Ubykh language had a very special sound system. It included 84 different consonant sounds, which is more than most languages, but only 3 vowel sounds. Some of these consonants were used mainly in words borrowed from other languages or in sounds that mimic things like animal noises. The language had many unique ways to shape these sounds, including special sounds made at the back of the mouth.

Orthography

People have tried to create ways to write the Ubykh language, but there has never been one main way that everyone uses. Fenwick made a guide for a "practical Ubykh orthography" that can be typed on a Turkish computer keyboard, and it is shown below:

Grammar

Main article: Ubykh grammar

Ubykh is agglutinative and polysynthetic. This means its words are built by adding many small parts together. It uses many consonants and only two vowel sounds.

Nouns in Ubykh can act like verbs. For example, the word for "child" can mean "I was a child" when used in a certain way. Nouns have different forms to show their role in a sentence, like whether they are the subject or the object.

Verbs in Ubykh change their form to show time (past, present, future) and other details. There are special ways to ask questions and to show where things are, like "above" or "below". The language uses many small parts before the main verb to give extra meaning.

Lexicon

Ubykh has words that follow a pattern of one sound followed by a vowel, but sometimes there are more sounds together. It uses putting words together to make new meanings, like saying "to see well" to mean "to love."

The language includes words that repeat sounds to copy things, like animal noises. Words can be very short or quite long, made from many smaller parts.

Ubykh borrows many words from other languages, mainly from Adyghe and Arabic, with some from Persian, Abkhaz, and South Caucasian languages. As the Ubykh language changed over time, more words came from these languages. Some words have different versions in Ubykh, but these older versions were used less often.

Evolution

Ubykh was a special language in the Northwest Caucasian family. It stood apart from others like Adyghe and Abkhaz. One big difference was how Ubykh handled certain sound changes — it kept old markers that other languages changed in their own ways.

Ubykh also had unique sounds called pharyngealised consonants, which other related languages did not use in the same way. Though Ubykh shared some traits with Adyghe and Kabardian, it also had connections with Abkhaz because of where its speakers lived. Many Ubykh people could speak both Ubykh and Adyghe.

Dialects

There were not many different versions, or dialects, of Ubykh. One known dialect changed some sounds a lot, reducing the total number of distinct sounds it used. Some sounds merged together, and certain features like pharyngealisation were lost or changed.

History

The Ubykh language was once spoken along the eastern coast of the Black Sea near Sochi. In 1864, the Ubykh people were forced to leave by the Russians, and they settled in Turkey, founding villages like Hacı Osman. Over time, Arabic and Circassian became more common, and many words from these languages entered Ubykh.

The Ubykh language disappeared on October 7, 1992, when its last fluent speaker, Tevfik Esenç, passed away. Before this, many linguists worked to record and study the language, collecting thousands of pages and audio recordings. Though Ubykh was never written by its speakers, some phrases were noted by travelers, and parts of its oral stories were recorded.

Linguists from different countries studied Ubykh. One Hungarian linguist, Julius von Mészáros, visited Turkey in 1930 and wrote extensively about the language. A famous French linguist, Georges Dumézil, also visited in 1930 and became well-known for his work on Ubykh. His books and papers helped others understand this complex language.

Notable characteristics

Ubykh was once known for having one of the largest numbers of consonant sounds in any language, though another language later took that title. Ubykh had many unique consonant sounds, including 20 uvular and 29 fricative sounds, which was more than any other known language at the time.

Samples

Here are a few examples of Ubykh words and sentences, along with their meanings:

• Fáxie zebıyale zewaqʼalé azecíne – "Long ago, one sheep and one goat went together."
• yaxhewtıní aduıgiıqʼén – "They grazed in the field."
• daxiebzínetʼın ábıj ácʼrefén – "The sheep met the goat in front."

These examples show how Ubykh words were put together to tell simple stories. One tale tells of a sheep and a goat who met in a field. The sheep jumped over a gully, and its tail was seen by the goat, which laughed. The sheep reminded the goat that its own tail was often visible without it noticing.