Mapa Jonah

xela do kaobate

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Hello. It's been quite a long time since the last post. More than four years. I must announce that there will be no new content for the blog. I will start storytelling in another blog. Thanks for all of your support and goodwill. Believe in every beauty of the world.

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A laz village in Atina, K’ale.

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Laroz Port/Atina.

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A laz boy

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a Laz man and A Laz woman statue. This shows the love, equality between man and woman and desire for freedom among Laz People. The Man holds a hawk. Hawk has been the most important icon among Laz people in past and in nowadays.

Arhavi/Artvin/Turkey.

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Lazca yaşasın...

Let the Laz Live...

A Documentary about a story of a Laz boy who is living outside of his hometown Vi3e(Findikli) where the Laz is the daily and native language of the people living there. He struggled but learned the language and he keeps talking with his mother tongue, Laz. You can watch with English and Turkish subtitles.

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Watching the beautiful landscape of Kaçkar Mountains from the top of a plateau of Ardeşen.

Ardeşen/Rize, 1986.

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Visit Original Link

A Laz Lullaby; Shurimshine Nana (My Lovely Mother)

Mskva nenaten domibirt'u, şurimşine çkimi nana Elam3kveri qoropaten, mi3'umert'u çkimi şana,

she was singing me lullabies with her beautiful voice, my lovely mother was calling me “her luck” with her endearious affection,

Nana nana çkimi k'ai nana, şana şana vore skani şana 

Mom, mom... My beautiful mom. Luck, luck I am your luck.

Nana çkimişi birapa, iri kort'as çkimi k'ala Ordo ordo gomaşinen, mcveş K'olxuri nena mskvana,

May my mothers' songs will always be with me, I always remember our old fathers' beautiful voice.

Dovirda do dovimskvana, ç'umen man ti viqva nana Bere çkimis mati vu3'va "gogağara çkimi şana" 

May I be grown and beautiful like you, I would have children and to them, I would say “ you are my most precious my luck”

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Before the Christianity, Laz people were pagans. They had been living with their created and mythological religion. They had believed that heaven is in the sky. When a person dies, their soul rises to the sky and stays with moon and stars. It was believed souls must rise to the sky through the sky gate (mʒa nekna). Nowadays, it is still popular among Laz people to say Mʒaşa exti (arise to the sky)to someone they love, shows that old religion has still impacts on the Laz people even today. 

A Laz Prayer;

Mjora Nanaşkimi Sun is my mother Tuta Babaşkimi, Moon is my father Çuta çuta murunʒxepe, and the Little Stars  Da do Cumaşkimi. are my sisters and brothers.

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Written in the banner: We want high school

Laz people are protesting the construction of the new mosque since they haven't got a high school but the government keeps building mosques.

Atina, Rize. Late 1970′s.

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Lela Tsurtsumia - Chuta Chani Lazuri Simgera

A Georgian Laz/Mingrelian singer performed a Batumi dialect Laz song worth to listen.

Chuta Chani (Little Laz) - Batumi Dialect

ǯulu Lazi (Little Laz) - Rize and Hopa Dialects

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A population signboard of Atina(Pazar) with a Laz family posing for the picture. 1973.

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Republic Day Celebration by Atinian Laz People in Atina Square on October 29, 2017.

Atina/Rize, Turkey.

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Dialects of Laz in Turkey

 1. West Laz/Rize Laz

It is spoken in the regions which belong to the province of Rize. Atina(Pazar), Artaşeni(Ardeşen) Vija(Camlihemsin) are the places West Laz is spoken, in order that the people living there have high intelligibility of speech.

2. East Laz/Artvin Laz

It is mainly spoken in the provinces of Artvin. Hopa, Arhavi, Kemalpasa, Borcka. They have the pure vocabulary. Their words didn’t assimilate so much so they have intelligibility with Georgian more.

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THE LANGUAGE, LAZURİ

The language, Lazuri, is a survival from a previous, almost lost deposit of human speech. A pre - Indo -European tongue, it belongs to the Kartvelian language -family of the Caucasus whose other members are Georgian (much the largest), Mingrelian and Svanetian. Mingrelian is the closest to Lazuri, and it would appear that both peoples were living as neighbours along the eastern shore of the Black Sea as long ago as ıooo BC.This coastal region around the river Phasis, near the modern Georgian ports of Poti and Batumi, was the land which the Greeks called Colchis, in mythology the home of Medea and the destination of the Argonauts who stole the Golden Fleece from its Colchian shrine. But it is unlikely that a single Colchian nation ever really existed. .. At some point, a large part of the Lazi abandoned their country. They left ' Colchis ' and the Caucasus, and moved round the south - eastern corner of the Black Sea to their present territory in what is now Turkey. The Mingrelians, in contrast, stayed much where they were; most of them retained their Christain religion, like the Georgians, while the Lazi and the much larger Abkhazian language group living further north along the Caucasian coast converted to Islam in the fifteenth century. Why and when this migration took place is not known for certain, but it seems to have happened about a thousand years ago, in the middle Byzantine period, and the Lazi may have been displaced by an Arab invasion of the Caucasus. In 1864, the Russian armies finally broke tribal resistance in the north - west Caucasus. Much of the Moslem population of Abkhazia and coastal Georgia fled or was expelled into the Ottoman Empire, and the many Lazi were swept along in the disaster. A small number still remain in Georgia. But their distinctiveness - like that of the Mingrelians - is resented by Georgian politicians and intellectualls who insist, inaccurately, that Georgian is their ' mother - tongue ' and that Mingrelian, Lazuri and Svanetians are mere 'dialects '. Arguments to the contrary, and attempts to provide these languages with a written literature and grammar, are shouted down as tokens of Russian cultural subversion, designed to undermine and divide Georgian culture and independence... * Neal Ascherson, Black Sea, Jonathan Cape, London, 1995.

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Laz children celebrating the Republican Day in 1970s.

Atina,Rize,Turkey

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Zuğaşi Berepe (Children of The Sea) - Va Mişkunan ( We don’t know anything), 1995.