Ubykh (ТВaҳəбзa/Twaxəbza)

Ubykh is a North West Caucasian language once spoken on the eastern coast of the Black Sea around Sochi, and also in Turkey. The Ubykhs were driven out of the Sochi region by the Russians in 1864. Most of them eventually settled in Turkey, where they founded the villages of Hacı Osman, Kırkpınar, Masukiye and Hacı Yakup.

During subsequent years the Ubykhs gradually adopted Turkish and Circassian as their everyday languages. The last fluent speaker of Ubykh (Tevfik Esenç) died on 7th October 1992 at the age of 88. Before his death linguists, such as Georges Dumézil, Hans Vogt and George Hewitt, were able to collect numerous audio recordings of spoken Ubykh and made copious notes about the language.

There has never been a standard written form of Ubykh, though there was a rich oral literature, some of which has been transcribed using a mixture of the IPA and the Latin alphabet.

The Ubykh people themselves have shown interest in relearning their difficult language, which include more consonants then just about any other language and very few vowels. To that end, an American, Mr Adam Dean, has created modifications of the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets specifically for writing Ubykh. Adam does not work for SIL or any linguistically related agency, but he has nonetheless produced these alphabets with the hope that they will be adopted for the language.

Proposed Cyrillic alphabet for Ubykh

Proposed Latin alphabet for Ubykh

Notes

Nasalised vowels are indicated by diaerises or umlauts above the vowel letters.
Other than [a] and [@], vowel articulations in Ubykh are uncertain. The vowel [O] may have been derived from [aa] as in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Other vowels are derived from [a] and [@] in conjunction with [j], [w], and labialised or palatised consonants; e.g., [g'a] becoming [ge]. These vowels will most likely be spoken as in Turkish, except for the sound [M] possibly becoming the schwa [@]. Nasalized vowels have also been noted in Ubykh according to the article on Wikipedia.
When Ǧ ǧ appears at the end of a word or before another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel sound. A Turkish word where this letter falls between two vowels may be transliterated intact, even though the letter "Y" is preferred between two vowels.
Even though the plain [v] sound does not occur in Ubykh, В в is included in the alphabet for the purpose of transliterating foreign words.
В в is also used as a labialisation marker [_w] when preceded by another consonant.
Ь ь is also used as a palatisation marker ['] when preceded by another consonant.
Ъ ъ is used solely as a pharyngealisation marker. If the pharyngeal stop [_?\] comes into the language when it is revived, however, this letter may be then used to represent that sound.
І is used to mark ejective or plosive consonants as well as the glottal stop [?]. The glottal stop did not originally occur in Ubykh, but the phoneme [q_>] is often turned into [?] when [q_>] occurs between two vowels. This is especially true in past tense verbs.
Ѓ ѓ lengthens the vowel which precedes it.
To simplify matters, letters representing [j] plus vowels have been eliminated. Instead, the Serbian practice of spelling out [j] plus a vowel shall be used.
To avoid confusing a palatised ejective consonant with a plain consonant plus Ы, the ejective sign will be written immediately after the basic consonant in Cyrillic and not at the end of the combination.
In both alphabets, the double guillemets « and » shall be used as open and close quotes. This is the standard practice in French, and has been adopted to avoid confusing the single close quote with the ejective.

NB: The IPA transliterations in these notes are given in X-SAMPA. For more details of X-SAMPA see: www.answers.com/topic/x-sampa

A Practical Orthography for Ubykh by Rohan Fenwick

Rohan first heard about Ubykh in the 1996 Guinness Book of Records, and since then he's been intrigued by the language. Over the last five years, he's spent much of his spare time writing a definitive dictionary in consultation with George Hewitt of the University of London, and is now very familiar with the workings of Ubykh phonology and morphology (despite the fact that he has no formal qualifications!), and can read and write it to a limited extent, although cannot speak it yet. He intends to go on to do Ph.D. study with Ubykh at some point, and he hopes to eventually help with the revival effort.

The purpose behind this orthography is to provide a combination of a wide scope of use (any Turkish or European keyboard can produce these combinations), aesthetics (there are no diacritics aside from the ejective apostrophe) and an ability to use normal English and Turkish punctuation, including capital letters and exclamation and question marks. However, quotation marks are, if possible, replaced by double guillemets « » in order to avoid possible confusion with the ejectives.

The old orthography of Ubykh was Latin-based, but used many diacritics, and was frightfully unstable, seeming to change with every new publication that came out. Rohan's main reason for formulating this Roman orthography is that during the five years he has been studying Ubykh, he has been in contact with many people who wish to know more about the language, and even a few who wish to learn it. He created this orthography so that it would be possible to send phonemically correct, and yet easily readable, Ubykh-language messages and lessons through ASCII-based email (since a few people do not yet have capability for rich text emails) without having to go to a character map or type those old shortcut keys like Alt+135 for /ç/.

In addition, Rohan thinks it is about time that Ubykh received a standardised, stable orthography in order to facilitate the revival of the language, and he believes a Roman-based orthography (although not necessarily this one, which is no more than a practical orthography at this stage) is the only practical solution, since Ubykh has not been spoken in any Cyrillic-using area for more than a century.

The characters /a/ (IPA [a]) and /e/, or /ı/ on a Turkish keyboard (IPA [@] (ə)), represent the two most common vowels of Ubykh, and /aa/ represents the uncertainly-analysed third, most open vowel (which is probably closest to IPA [ɑ] and is not rounded, despite Adam Dean's transcription of this vowel as /ɔ/).

Practical ASCII-Based Ubykh Romanisation by Rohan Fenwick

Notes

/v g k k'/ only appear in loan words.
/x/ marks pharyngealisation, as well as frication of the velars (since no other letter is available to serve in these functions), and /h/ marks the postalveolar series (a convention borrowed from English), since there is no attested instance of the phoneme h in cluster with any other phoneme.
/u/ marks labialisation of all types, and /i/ palatalisation (including in the alveolopalatals; despite the fact that they are not truly secondarily palatalised like the velar and uvular phonemes, the alveolopalatals still affect vowels in a similar way to the palatalised velars and uvulars).
/r/ marks retroflexion, a convention borrowed from Vietnamese orthography. r in Ubykh is a rare phoneme, and I have not come across any word that contains the sequences /j + r/, /c + r/, /z + r/ or /s + r/ that may be confused with the single phonemes /jr/, /cr/, /zr/ or /sr/.
/q'/ between vowels, particularly in the past tense suffix -q'a, is sometimes pronounced as a glottal stop, and so may be reduced to /'/ in this position.

Sample text in Ubykh (Practical Orthography)

1. Faaqhia Adegxagha zanaynshuguara latuq'a. 2. Wanaynshu ghayweghia shq'ane pqhiadek'uen ghaqhuachanayt'. 3. «Zashuablalhawaguaragha zapqhiadek'ulhareqha lat» aq'agie ghaq'uq'a. 4. Wapqhiadek'uen sangiaafe psalheqhu qhiayk'iaq'ashagie, «Seghua semguechaaq'asia segien ghac'alhe adec'ianen sejhek'iawt» q'agie alasq'ayt'. 5. Anaynshu wapqhiadek'u zanebyawma aynewawten lhaq'awq'a. 6. Achabghiawesen ak'iagie dghaziuapsawna zaqxaasieguaran giewen washuwa wazaq'aala alasq'a.

IPA transcription

1. faaχʲa adəɣaʁa zanajnʃʷgʷara latʷqʼa. 2. wanajnʃʷ ʁajwəʁʲa ʃqʼanə pχʲadəkʷʼən ʁaχʷaʧanajtʼ. 3. “zaʃʷablaɬawagʷaraʁa zapχʲadəkʷʼɬarəχa lat” aqʼagʲə ʁaqʷʼqʼa. 4. wapχʲadəkʷʼən sangʲaafə psaɬəχʷ χʲajkʲʼaqʼaʃagʲə “səʁʷa səmgʷəʧaaqʼaɕa səgʲən ʁaʦʼaɬə adəʨʼanən səʤəkʲʼawt” qʼagʲə alasqʼaytʼ. 5. anajnʃʷ wapχʲadəkʷʼ zanəbjawma ajnəwawtən ɬaqʼawqʼa. 6. aʧabʁʲawəsən akʲʼagʲə dʁaʑʷapsawna zaqˁaaɕəgʷaran gʲəwən waʃʷwa wazaqʼaala alasqʼa.

English free translation

1. Once upon a time, in the Caucasus, there was a certain young man. 2. This young man, having become of an age to marry, was looking for a young woman. 3. In a certain distant country, he had heard them say, there was a renowned young woman. 4. This young woman remained unmarried, saying to those who came to court her "I will marry he who knows what is in my heart without my telling him." 5. The young man sent himself off to the young woman to marry her. 6. Getting on his horse, he went, and when night fell, he entered a certain village and stayed there.

Lines 1-6 of the fable The Smart Young Girl, published by Georges Dumézil in Transactions of the Philological Society 1961, pages 56-67.

Links

Information about the Ubykh language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubykh_language

Information about the Ubykh people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubykh_people

Information about the Ubykh phonology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubykh_phonology

If you have any questions about this page, you can contact Adam Dean at adamedean@juno.com and Rohan Fenwick at the_famous_eccles1@hotmail.com

Related languages

Abaza, Abhkaz, Adyghe, Archi, Avar, Chechen, Dargwa, Georgian, Ingush, Kabardian, Lak, Laz, Lezgian, Svan, Tabassaran, Tsez, Ubykh

Other languages written with the Cyrillic alphabet

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