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Easiest north caucasian language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Schalburg Tetraglot Newbie Denmark Joined 4405 days ago 11 posts - 11 votes Speaks: Danish*, German, English, Russian | Message 1 of 19 11 June 2012 at 11:59am | IP Logged | ||
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I have always been interested in the russian north caucasus, and I already visited the
region once. And although I get by without problems with russian only, I would like to learn one of the local languages. So my question is. Which one is the easiest. I dont just mean the language itself, but also in regards to language materials, radio, movies, number of speakers, diasporas and stuff like that. So does anyone have any idea about that? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ellsworth Senior Member United States Joined 4768 days ago 345 posts - 528 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Irish | Message 2 of 19 11 June 2012 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well I don't really think your going to have ease with any of them, but maybe Chechen? It's not indo-european but I have found some resources online.
I personally think Ossetic is a really cool language too, one of the coolest indo-european and might be worth a try. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Wilco Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6141 days ago 160 posts - 247 votes Speaks: French*, English, Russian | Message 3 of 19 12 June 2012 at 4:53am | IP Logged | ||
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Ossetian is by far the easiest.
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| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4583 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 4 of 19 12 June 2012 at 9:13am | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, Ossetic will probably be the most familiar to an Indo-European speaker, but it isn't without its difficulties, most notably a rather extensive declension system of nine cases that don't quite match up to the traditional Latin/Greek/Sanskrit ones. If you're fluent in Russian then you're probably already relatively comfortable with declensions, but if you'd rather not have them then you could go for a Northwest Caucasian language. I am doing Abkhaz right now, and I believe that its noun system is simple even by Northwest Caucasian standards. The verbs are where it's at - their borderline polysynthetic quality can sometimes put all the information of a sentence into one verb, and balancing all those additional morphemes is quite a puzzle.
As for diaspora size and influence, I believe the biggest and most established one by far is the Circassian diaspora, followed by either Chechen or Abkhaz (though the latter is technically not from North Caucasus). Circassian has two main variants (often called separate languages), Adyghe and Kabardian. Kabardian is the one that has the most speakers overall, but I'm not sure what the proportions are in the diaspora. It also has the distinction of being the Northwest Caucasian language that has the least consonants, although still more than Ossetic. Edited by vonPeterhof on 13 June 2012 at 12:41am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tanya b Senior Member United States Joined 4589 days ago 159 posts - 518 votes Speaks: Russian | Message 5 of 19 13 June 2012 at 2:17am | IP Logged | ||
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I think very very few non-native speakers have ever mastered a north Caucasian language and that includes Georgian. There are a few Armenians, living in Abkhazia, who can speak Apsua, or Abkhaz.
However there is a British professor named Hewitt, who speaks no Russian, who apparently is fluent in Abkhaz and has written a dictionary and textbook for English speakers. I once recorded a Russian news program about Abkhazia and happened to hear someone deliver a speech entirely in Abkhaz. The Abkhaz language was so breathtakingly beautiful that I listened to the speech several times even though I had no idea what he was saying. BTW Abkhaz is a minority language even in Abkhazia and is giving way to Russian, but it still is a language that touches my heart. Too bad there are only a handful of speakers. Edited by tanya b on 13 June 2012 at 2:22am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4941 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 6 of 19 13 June 2012 at 3:12am | IP Logged | ||
Georgian is a South Caucasian language. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Schalburg Tetraglot Newbie Denmark Joined 4405 days ago 11 posts - 11 votes Speaks: Danish*, German, English, Russian | Message 7 of 19 13 June 2012 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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I know that its not gonna be easy at all.
I have heard that Kabardinian should be one of the toughest languages. I find Chechen to be the most interesting actually. But I doubt that it would be safe to travel there, and there is no diaspora where I live, so you probably wouldt get a chance to use it.. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5275 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 8 of 19 14 June 2012 at 12:02am | IP Logged | ||
George Hewitt also knows Georgian very well, although whether or not he has mastered it I couldn't say. Well enough, though, to teach a degree course in Georgian at The School of Oriental and African Studies at London University. He seems like an interesting guy, and not a little controversial. He wrote a Georgian textbook which was highly criticized due to its inaccuracies and supposed prejudicial statements against Georgians. In the final year of his degree course students study Abkhazian, having spent only two years on Georgian, not enough to reach even a solid intermediate level. As far as I am aware, he is married to an Abkhazian woman and serves as the unofficial British ambassador to Abkhazia. He is highly critical of the Georgian government and seems to have a rather low opinion of Georgia and its people in general. By the way, the degree course can only be taken in combination with another subject and, in contrast to most UK language degrees,does not include compulsory study abroad in Georgia. I also wonder how enjoyable it would be to study a language under a teacher who doesn't love the culture and country associated with that language. Nevertheless it's good that it exists, and SOAS seems like a wonderful institution. Edited by TixhiiDon on 14 June 2012 at 12:06am 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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