The Republic of Adygea is part of the Russian Federation and is its first constituent entity (01 region). The Adyghe language has found its written language recently, although it is spoken by about 300 thousand people, mainly living in the North Caucasus. Previously, people used only an oral form of language expression. Below we consider the history of the Adyghe alphabet, how many letters are in it and what phonetics. We also find out what is the state of the language being studied today.
History of the Adyghe alphabet
The language of the nationality belongs to the Abkhaz-Adyghe group, the kinship of which is traced by linguists with the ancient Hutt. The written language of this people did not have their own literal basis before they began to write down their thoughts and traditions - the Circassians used only oral speech. Influenced by the Turks, the Adyghe people tried to spell their language using Arabic script, but it was difficult.
Later, at the beginning of the 20th century, there were attempts to write the language on the basis of the Latin alphabet, but in 1938, with the approval of the USSR, it was decided to create the Adyghe language alphabet in Cyrillic.
The first alphabet of Russian letters was composed by the scientist L. Ya. Liulier, but his alphabet could not convey the complex phonetics of the Russian language, since the scientist was not its native speaker.
The modern Adyghe alphabet in Cyrillic has found its existence thanks to two outstanding scientists - N.F. Yakovlev and D.A. Ashhamaf. The basis of the literary language is the Temirgoy dialect. By the way, the language spoken by individual tribes of the Circassians is poorly understood by native speakers. In other words, there are still separate villages in the republic with their own special structures and words.
Phonetics of the Adyghe language
Above mentioned the complexity of pronunciation. Indeed, the Adyghe language is very hissing. It captures many shades of pronunciation - the hardness and softness of the letters.
In order to express the rich phonetics of the Adyghe language, a large number of sounds, and therefore letters, are required. For them, an emphasis on pronunciation is important. There are sounds that have no analogues in the Russian language.
Many sounds are pronounced epiglottically, lingeringly, or, conversely, quickly and abruptly.
There are 7 vowels and 57 consonants in the Adyghe language. The peculiarity of vowel sounds is that from the letters "a", "e", "s", "o", u sounds are formed "I a", "I e", "I s", "I o", "I y ".
An “l” is a sign that is not a separate letter, but is used to express the pronunciation of the exhalation. If this sign is in front of a vowel, then first you need to pour out the air, and then pronounce the usual "a", "e", "y", "o", "s". The presence or absence of this sign affects the meaning of the word.
Adyghe letters
It is because of the incredible complexity and uniqueness of the phonetics of the letters in the language that there are more letters than in the Russian alphabet, and reading them is possible only with a native speaker, since only Adyghe is able to read them correctly. In other words, the letters are Russian, but they are read and pronounced in Adyghe.
How many letters are in the Adyghe alphabet? Yes, only 66 letters. Many of them are similar to Russian, but here you can find letters consisting of two or three letters.
For example, there are monosyllabic letters (these are all letters of the Russian alphabet). There are also two-syllable ones: “gu”, “g”, “j”, “dz”, “zh”, “zh”, “ku”, “kb”, “k I”, “l”, “l I” , " I", " I", "", "", "", " I", "", " I", "", " I", "I " . And the three-syllable ones: “gu”, “zu”, “zhu”, “kyu”, “to I y”, “p I I”, “t I I”, “hu”, “shu”, “w I I” .
The Adyghe language alphabet turned out to be cumbersome, difficult to perceive Russian people. The difficulty arises from the lack of independent writing and its own language system. This is a young language that continues to develop under the influence of Russian.
Modern Adyghe language
The language is similar to the Kabardino-Circassian language, since the Kabardins and Circassians understand Adyghe well and vice versa.
Today in the republic they speak four dialects: Shapsug, Bjedug, Abadzekh, Temirgoev. The latter, as mentioned above, is a literary language. The works of Dag writers of the 20th century are written on it, legends and life of ancient tribes, folk tales are described.
The remaining three dialects relate to the peculiarities of the language of the ancestors of the Shapsug, Abadzekh and Bjedug tribes. These are the most numerous and influential tribes living in the North Caucasus. And now secretly there is a division of Circassians into these families. Almost anyone knows which family his relatives belong to.
Now it is natural to mix these families, but some still retain their individuality and special dialect.
The people of Adygea protect their language
The people of the Circassians love their native language. In the republic, it is the second state after Russian, it runs news programs and publishes literature. The authorities are trying to maintain the identity of their people and follow the traditions. All Adyghe people know Russian, but learn the Adyghe language at schools, institutes.
Thus, we found that this language is very difficult to learn. In many ways, difficulties arise in the study of pronunciation, since the sounds of the Adyghe language do not coincide with the Russian. The presence of a huge number of letters (twice as many as in Russian) complicates learning. Everyone who lives in the Republic of Adygea knows how to write the Adyghe alphabet in words, since the letters are from the Cyrillic alphabet, that is, the letter is identical to Russian.