#dargwa

[songs-of-the-east]

Dargins from Dagestan in Traditional Burka Made of the Pelt of a Karkaul Sheep

[gwendolynlerman]

Languages of the world

Dargwa (дарган мез)

Basic facts

Number of native speakers: 490,000

Official language: Dagestan (Russia)

Language of diaspora: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan

Script: Cyrillic, 46 letters

Grammatical cases: 8

Linguistic typology: agglutinative, SOV

Language family: Northeast Caucasian, Dargin

Number of dialects: 4

History

1926 - Arabic script replaced by the Latin alphabet

1937 - instauration of the Cyrillic alphabet

Writing system and pronunciation

These are the letters that make up the alphabet: а б в г гъ гь гӀ д е ё ж з и й к къ кь кӀ л м н о п пӀ р с т тӀ у ф х хъ хь хӀ ц цӀ ч чӀ ш щ ъ ы ь э ю я.

Stress is clearly defined in Standard Dargwa, but in some dialects, stress is dynamic and has no stable position.

Grammar

Nouns have no gender but class (masculine, feminine, and non-human), two numbers (singular and plural), and eight main cases (absolutive, ergative, genitive, superlative, comitative, contentive, instrumental, and locative). The locative case has the following paradigms: suplative, superessive, superdirective, superelative, sublative, subessive, subdirective, subelative, antelative, anteessive, antedirective, anteelative, postlative, postessive, postdirective, postelative, illative, inessive, indirective, and elative.

Dargwa has postpositions and only first and second person personal pronouns.

Verbs are conjugated for tense, mood (indicative, conditional, prohibitive, optative, subjunctive, prospective, and imperative), aspect (perfective and imperfective), modality, evidentiality, polarity, class, person, and number.

Dialects

There are four dialects: Cudaxar, Akusha, Muirin, and Sirxin. Dargwa itself belongs to the Dargin dialect continuum, which includes Kajtak, Kubachi, Itsari, and Chirag as well.

The differences between dialects are mainly phonological.