Languages of the world
Lezgian (лезги чӏал)
Basic facts
Number of native speakers: 633,600
Official language: Dagestan (Russia)
Language of diaspora: Azerbaijan, Germany, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Ukraine, Uzbekistan
Script: Cyrillic, 45 letters
Grammatical cases: 18
Linguistic typology: agglutinative, SOV
Language family: Northeast Caucasian, Lezgic, Samur, Eastern Samur, Lezgi-Aghul-Tabasaran
Number of dialects: 3
History
beginning of the 20th century - Arabic script
1928 - introduction of the Latin alphabet
1938 - replacement by the Cyrllic alphabet
Writing system and pronunciation
These are the letters that make up the alphabet: а б в г гъ гь д е ё ж з и й к къ кь кӏ л м н о п пӏ р с т тӏ у уь ф х хъ хь ц цӏ ч чӏ ш щ ъ ы ь э ю я.
Stress is generally placed on the second syllable.
Grammar
Nouns have no gender, two numbers (singular and plural) and eighteen cases (absolutive, ergative, genitive, dative, adessive, adelative, additective, postessive, postelative, postdirective, subessive, subelative, subdirective, inessive, inelative, superessive, superelative, and superdirective).
Numerals are based on the vigesimal system, similarly to French. Nouns following a number are always in singular.
Verbs are conjugated for tense, mood (indicative, imperative, prohibitive, optative, and hortative), and aspect (imperfective and perfective). Person and number are not taken into account in verb conjugation.
Dialects
There are three dialects, Küre, Axceh, and Quba. They diverge in phonology and morphology.
Standard Lezgian is based on the Küre dialect.
