Avar introduction
From UniLang Wiki
The Avar language (self-designation МагIарул мацI - "language of the mountains") is the most important member of the Northeast Caucasian, (or Dagestani) language family.
It is spoken by about 604,300 people worldwide, mainly in the central and south-western regions of the Russian republic of Dagestan (496,100 speakers) where it is an official language, as well as in adjacent districts of Azerbaijan (44,100); it is also spoken in the republics of Chechnya and Kalmykia (giving a total of 544,000 speakers in all of Russia), in Georgia (4,200), and in Kazakhstan (2,800). There is also a small diaspora in the Marmara sea region of Turkey.
Though Avar was mainly a spoken language in the past, it does have a fairly long history of being written. In the 15 Century it began to be written in the old Georgian alphabet. From the 17th Century onwards it was written in a modified Arabic script known as Ajam. As part of the Soviet language planning policies of the 1920s it was given a Latin-based alphabet, which was used from 1928 to 1937. In 1938 it was switched over to a Cyrillic alphabet, which is the one used today.
The literary language has its basis in the bolmats (болмацI), the common language of communication between speakers of different dialects and languages. The bolmats itself is based on the dialect of Khunzakh, which was the cultural centre of the Avar-speaking world.
Avar has four main dialects which fall into two groups:
- Northern, which includes Khunzakh;
- Southern, which includes Gidatl, Andalal, and Antsukh, and others.
Because of an already existing literary tradition, Avar has been one of the more successful of the North Caucasian languages in this domain. The best-known of the modern Avar writers is undoubtedly Rasul Gamzatov († November 3, 2003), the People's Poet of Dagestan, who published many collections of poetry in Avar. Translations of his works into Russian and other languages have gained him a much wider audience in the former USSR and abroad.
