lingvo.wikisort.org - Language

The Laz language (Laz: ლაზური ნენა, romanized: lazuri nena; Georgian: ლაზური ენა/ჭანური ენა, romanized: lazuri ena/ch'anuri ena; Turkish: Lazca) is a Kartvelian language spoken by the Laz people on the southeastern shore of the Black Sea.[2] In 2007, it was estimated that there were around 20,000 native speakers in Turkey, in a strip of land extending from Melyat to the Georgian border (officially called Lazistan until 1925), and around 1,000 native speakers around Adjara in Georgia. There is an addition of around 1,000 native speakers of Laz in Germany.[1]

Laz
Lazuri, ლაზური
Native to	Turkey Georgia
Ethnicity	Laz people
Native speakers	22,000 (2007[1])
Language family	Kartvelian languages Karto-Zan Zan Laz
Writing system	In Turkey: Latin script In Georgia: Georgian script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	lzz
Glottolog	lazz1240
ELP	Laz
Kartvelian Languages
Laz is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Laz people
Place of distribution Lazistan Georgia Turkey Germany
Religion Sunni Islam Christianity Eparchy of Batumi and Lazeti The Seven Brothers of Lazia Laz Martyrs Churches: Jibistasi, Noghedi, Pironity
Culture Laz language Laz grammar Barchkhali Dance Cuisine Agani Murutsxi (Newspaper)
History Colchian culture ancient Colchian tribes Colchis Satrapy of Persia Greek colonisation Pontus Roman rule Kingdom of Lazica Christianization Byzantine rule Trebizond Empire Kingdom of Imereti Ottoman rule Hellenization Laz rebellion (1832–1834)
Related peoples Mingrelians Svans other groups of Georgians
v t e

Laz is not a written language nor a literary language albeit attempts. According to Benninghaus, the Laz themselves have no interest in writing in Laz.[3]

Classification

Laz is one of the four Kartvelian languages. Along with Mingrelian, it forms the Zan branch of this Kartvelian language family. The two languages are very closely related, to the extent that some linguists refer to Mingrelian and Laz as dialects or regional variants of a single Zan language, a view held officially in the Soviet era and still so in Georgia today. In general, however, Mingrelian and Laz are considered as separate languages, due both to the long-standing separation of their communities of speakers (500 years) and to a lack of mutual intelligibility. The Laz are shifting to the Turkish of Trebizond.[4][5]

Geographical distribution

The Georgian language, along with its relatives Mingrelian, Laz, and Svan, comprise the Kartvelian language family. The initial breakup of Proto-Kartvelian is estimated to have been around 2500–2000 B.C., with the divergence of Svan from Proto-Kartvelian (Nichols, 1998). Assyrian, Urartian, Greek, and Roman documents reveal that in early historical times (2nd–1st millennia B.C.), the numerous Kartvelian tribes were in the process of migrating into the Caucasus from the southwest. The northern coast and coastal mountains of Asia Minor were dominated by Kartvelian peoples at least as far west as Samsun. Their eastward migration may have been set in motion by the fall of Troy (dated by Eratosthenes to 1183 B.C.). It thus appears that the Kartvelians represent an intrusion into the Georgian plain from northeastern Anatolia, displacing their predecessors, the unrelated Northwest Caucasian and Vainakh peoples, into the Caucasian highlands (Tuite, 1996; Nichols, 2004).[6]

The oldest known settlement of the Lazoi is the town of Lazos or "old Lazik" which Arrian puts 680 stadia (about 80 miles) south of the Sacred Port (Novorossiisk) and 1,020 stadia (100 miles) north of Pityus, i.e.somewhere in the neighborhood of Tuapse. Kiessling sees in the Lazoi a section of the Kerketai, who in the first centuries of the Christian era had to migrate southwards under pressure from the Zygoi. The same author regards the Kerketai as a "Georgian" tribe. The fact is that at the time of Arrian (2nd century A.D.), the Lazoi were already living to the south of Um. The order of the peoples living along the coast to the east of Trebizond was as follows: Colchi (and Sanni); Machelones; Heniochi; Zydritae; Lazai, subjects of King Malassus, who owned the suzerainty of Rome; Apsilae; Abacsi; Sanigae near Sebastopolis.[5]

Social and cultural status

Laz has no official status in either Turkey or Georgia, and no written standard. It is presently used only for familiar and casual interaction; for literary, business, and other purposes, Laz speakers use their country's official language (Turkish or Georgian).

Laz is unique among the Kartvelian languages in that most of its speakers live in Turkey rather than Georgia. While the differences between the various dialects are minor, their speakers feel that their level of mutual intelligibility is low. Given that there is no common standard form of Laz, speakers of its different dialects use Turkish to communicate with each other.

Between 1930 and 1938, Zan (Laz and Mingrelian) enjoyed cultural autonomy in Georgia and was used as a literary language, but an official standard form of the tongue was never established. Since then, all attempts to create a written tradition in Zan have failed, despite the fact that most intellectuals use it as a literary language.

In Turkey, Laz has been a written language since 1984, when an alphabet based on the Turkish alphabet was created. Since then, this system has been used in most of the handful of publications that have appeared in Laz. Developed specifically for the Kartvelian languages, the Georgian alphabet is better suited to the sounds of Laz, but the fact that most of the tongue's speakers live in Turkey, where the Latin alphabet is used, has rendered the adoption of the former impossible. Nonetheless, 1991 saw the publication of a textbook called Nana-nena ('Mother tongue'), which was aimed at all Laz speakers and used both the Latin and Georgian alphabets. The first Laz–Turkish dictionary was published in 1999.

Speaking Laz was forbidden in Turkey between 1980 and 1991 because this was seen as a political threat to unity of the country. During this era, some of the academicians regret the existence of the Laz ethnic group. Because speaking Laz was banned in public areas, many children lost their mother tongue as a result of not communicating with their parents. Most Laz people have a heavy Turkish accent because they can not practice their mother tongue.[7]

Statistics in Turkey (1935-2007)

Year	Laz speakers	%	notes
1935[8]	63,253 (first language) 5,061 (second language)	0.42%	Census
1945[8]	39,232 (first language) 4,956 (second language)	0.24%
1950[8]	70,423 (total)	0.34%
1955[8]	30,566 (first language) 19,144 (second language)	0.21%
1960[8]	21,703 (first language) 38,275 (second language)	0.22%
1965[8]	26,007 (first language) 55,158 (second language)	0.26%
1980[9]	30,000 (first language)	0.07%	Estimate
2007[10]	20,000 (total)	0.03%

Writing system

Laz is written in Mkhedruli script and in an extension of the Turkish alphabet.[11] For the Laz letters written in the Latin script, the first is a letter from the writing system introduced in Turkey in 1984 that was developed by Fahri Lazoğlu and Wolfgang Feurstein and the second is the transcription system used by Caucasianists.[11]

Alphabets		Transcriptions
Mkhedruli (Georgia)	Latin Laz (Turkey)	Latin	IPA
ა	a	a	ɑ
ბ	b	b	b
გ	g	g	ɡ
დ	d	d	d
ე	e	e	ɛ
ვ	v	v	v
ზ	z	z	z
თ	t	t	t
ი	i	i	i
კ	ǩ (or kʼ)	k	kʼ
ლ	l	l	l
მ	m	m	m
ნ	n	n	n
ჲ	y	y	j
ო	o	o	ɔ
პ	p̌ (or pʼ)	p	pʼ
ჟ	j	ⱬ	ʒ
რ	r	r	r
ს	s	s	s
ტ	t‌̌ (or tʼ)	ṫ	tʼ
უ	u	u	u
ფ	p	f	p
ქ	k	q	k
ღ	ğ	gh	ɣ
ყ	q	ɣ	qʼ
შ	ş	sh	ʃ
ჩ	ç	ch	t͡ʃ
ც	ʒ (or з or ts)[12]	c	t͡s
ძ	ž (or zʼ)	dz	d͡z
წ	ǯ (or зʼ or tsʼ)[12]	ʒ	t͡sʼ
ჭ	ç̌ (or çʼ)	çh	t͡ʃʼ
ხ	x	x	x
ჯ	c	j	d͡ʒ
ჰ	h	h	h
ჶ	f	f	f

Linguistic features

Like many languages of the Caucasus, Laz has a rich consonantal system (in fact, the richest among the Kartvelian family) but only five vowels (a, e, i, o, u). The nouns are inflected with agglutinative suffixes to indicate grammatical function (four to seven cases, depending on the dialect) and number (singular or plural), but not by gender. The Laz verb is inflected with suffixes according to person and number, and also for grammatical tense, aspect, mood, and (in some dialects) evidentiality. Up to 50 verbal prefixes are used to indicate spatial orientation/direction. Person and number suffixes provided for the subject as well as for one or two objects involved in the action, e.g. gimpulam = "I hide it from you".

Phonology

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stop	plain	p	t		k
	voiced	b	d		ɡ
	ejective	pʼ	tʼ		kʼ	qʼ
Affricate	plain		t͡s	t͡ʃ
	voiced		d͡z	d͡ʒ
	ejective		t͡sʼ	t͡ʃʼ
Fricative	plain	f	s	ʃ	x		h
	voiced	v	z	ʒ	ɣ
Nasal		m	n
Approximant			l	j
Trill			r

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Mid	ɛ	ɔ
Open	ɑ

Grammar

Some distinctive features of Laz among its family are:

• All nouns end with a vowel.
• More extensive verb inflection, using directional prefixes.
• Substantial lexical borrowings from Greek and Turkic languages.

See also

• Colchis
• Kaskian language

References

Bibliography

• Anderson, Ralph Dewitt. (1963). A Grammar of Laz. Ann Arbor: UMI. (Doctoral dissertation, Austin: University of Texas at Austin; vi+127pp.)
• Grove, Timothy (2012). Materials for a Comprehensive History of the Caucasus, with an Emphasis on Greco-Roman Sources. A Star in the East: Materials for a Comprehensive History of the Caucasus, with an Emphasis on Greco-Roman sources (2012)
• Kojima, Gôichi (2003) Lazuri grameri Chiviyazıları, Kadıköy, İstanbul, ISBN 975-8663-55-0 (notes in English and Turkish)
• Nichols, Johanna (1998). The origin and dispersal of languages: Linguistic evidence. In N. G. Jablonski & L. C. Aiello (Eds.), The origin and diversification of language. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences.
• Nichols, Johanna (2004). The origin of the Chechen and Ingush: A study in Alpine linguistic and ethnic geography. Anthropological Linguistics 46(2): 129-155.
• Tuite, Kevin. (1996). Highland Georgian paganism — archaism or innovation?: Review of Zurab K’ik’nadze. 1996. Kartuli mitologia, I. ǰvari da saq’mo. (Georgian mythology, I. The cross and his people [sic].). Annual of the Society for the Study of Caucasia 7: 79-91.

External links

• (in Turkish) Lazkulturdernegi.org.tr
• (in Turkish) Laz Cultur – Information about Lazs, Laz Language, Culture, Music
• (in Turkish) Laz Cultur – Information about Lazs, Laz Language, Culture, Music
• (in Turkish) Laz Cultur – Information about Lazs, Laz Language, Culture, Music and Laz Diaspora
• Lazuri Nena – The Language of the Laz by Silvia Kutscher.
• Laz-Turkish full dictionary in word format
• Samples of Laz Language in English, Dutch and Turkish, Arzu Barské - Erdogan on Yahoo! GeoCities
• Laz history and language, Lazlar, Yilmaz Erdogan on Yahoo! GeoCities
• Laz Georgian-Latin and Latin-Georgian converter

На других языках

---

[de] Lasische Sprache

Die lasische Sprache (Lasisch: ლაზური ნენა .mw-parser-output .Latn{font-family:"Akzidenz Grotesk","Arial","Avant Garde Gothic","Calibri","Futura","Geneva","Gill Sans","Helvetica","Lucida Grande","Lucida Sans Unicode","Lucida Grande","Stone Sans","Tahoma","Trebuchet","Univers","Verdana"}lazuri nena; türkisch Lazca, georgisch ლაზური ენა) ist eine Südkaukasische Sprache, die im äußersten Nordosten der Türkei und im Südwesten Georgiens von dem Volk der Lasen gesprochen wird. Die Sprache ist eng verwandt mit dem Mingrelischen.

---

- [en] Laz language

---

[es] Idioma laz

El idioma laz (en laz: ლაზური ნენა, romanizado: lazuri nena), también conocido como lazurí, es una lengua kartveliana hablado por los lazes en la margen suroriental del mar Negro, entre Turquía y Georgia. Se estima que lo hablan entre 220.000 y 500.000 personas en las provincias turcas de Rize y Artvin y unas 30.000 personas en la república autónoma georgiana de Ayaria. La cantidad de jóvenes que lo hablan ha disminuido sustancialmente y por ello, entre otros motivos, la UNESCO y ELP lo designan como "susceptible de extinción".[1]

---

[fr] Laze (langue caucasienne)

Le laze (en laze : Lazuri nena, ლაზური ნენა ; en géorgien : ლაზური ენა en turc : Lazca) est une langue caucasienne de la famille des langues kartvéliennes proche du géorgien, dont elle s'est séparée, avec le mingrélien, un millénaire avant l'ère chrétienne. Le laze n'a plus de forme écrite actuellement utilisée, les Lazes de Turquie (220 000) parlent laze mais utilisent le turc comme langue de communication écrite et interculturelle, tandis que ceux de Géorgie (30 000) utilisent le géorgien.

---

[it] Lingua laz

La lingua laz (ლაზური ნენა, lazuri nena; georgiano: ლაზური ენა, lazuri ena, o ჭანური ენა, č'anuri ena, o anche chanuri ena) è parlata dalla popolazione laz sulla riva sud-orientale del Mar Nero. Si è stimato che ci sono circa 30.000[1] parlanti nativi laz in Turchia, in una striscia di terra che si estende da Melyat fino al confine georgiano (ufficialmente chiamata Lazistan fino al 1925), e quasi 2.000 in Georgia.[1]

---

[ru] Лазский язык

Ла́зский язы́к (устар. ча́нский) — принадлежащий к картвельской семье язык лазов, проживающих на юго-восточном берегу Чёрного моря. Распространён на территории современных Турции и Грузии. Общее число говорящих составляет примерно 22 000 человек.

---

---