Dargwa language

Dargwa
дарган мез dargan mez[needs IPA]
Spoken in	Russia
Region	Dagestan
Ethnicity	Dargins
Native speakers	510,000  (2002 census)
Language family	Northeast Caucasian Dargin Dargwa
Official status
Regulated by	No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-2	dar
ISO 639-3	dar

The Dargwa or Dargin language is spoken by the Dargin people of Dagestan. It is the literary and main dialect of the dialect continuum constituting the Dargin languages. The four other languages in this dialect continuum (Kajtak, Kubachi, Itsari, and Chirag) are often considered variants of Dargwa. Ethnologue lists these under Dargwa, but recognizes that these may be different languages. Its people are Sunni Muslims. Dargwa uses a modified version of the Cyrillic alphabet.

As per the 2002 Census, there are 429,347 speakers of Dargwa proper in Dagestan, 7,188 in neighbouring Kalmykia, 1,620 in Khantia-Mansia, 680 in Chechnya, and hundreds more in other parts of Russia. Figures for the Lakh dialect^{[clarification needed]} are 142,523 in Dagestan, 1,504 in Kabardino-Balkaria, 708 in Khantia-Mansia.^{[verification needed]}

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

Consonant phonemes of Dargwa^[1]

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Epi- glottal	Glottal
Nasal		m	n
Plosive	voiced		d			ɡ	ɢ	ʡ
	voiceless	p	t			k	q
	ejective	pʼ	tʼ			kʼ	qʼ	ʡʼ
Affricate	voiced		d͡z	d͡ʒ
	voiceless		t͡s	t͡ʃ
	ejective		t͡sʼ	t͡ʃʼ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s	ʃ	ç	x
	voiced	v	z	ʒ		ɣ	ʁ		ɦ
Trill				r
Approximant			l		j

• Note that the source is rather ambiguous in its using the term laryngeal for a row of radical consonants that includes both a voiced and a glottalic (i.e. ejective) plosive. A voiced glottal plosive canʼt be made, as the glottis needs to be closed. Pending clarification, this row has been transcripted here as the epiglottal and glottal columns.

References

1. ^ Consonant Systems of the Northeast Caucasian Languages on TITUS DIDACTICA

External links

• Appendix:Cyrillic script
• Dargin language (Russian)