Karachay–Balkar (Къарачай-Малкъар тил, Qaraçay-Malqar til), or Mountain Turkic (Таулу тил, Tawlu til), is a Turkic language spoken by the Karachays and Balkars in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay–Cherkessia, European Russia, as well as by an immigrant population in Afyonkarahisar Province, Turkey. It is divided into two dialects: Karachay-Baksan-Chegem, which pronounces two phonemes as and and Malkar, which pronounces the corresponding phonemes as and. The modern Karachay–Balkar written language is based on the Karachay–Baksan–Chegem dialect. The language is closely related to Kumyk.

Phonology

Parentheses indicate allophones, brackets indicate phonemes from loanwords.

Orthography

Historically, the Arabic alphabet had been used by first writers until 1924. Handwritten manuscripts of the Balkar poet Kazim Mechiev and other examples of literature have been preserved to this day. The first printed books in Karachay–Balkar were published in the beginning of the 20th century. In 1910, the prominent educator and the father of literary Karachay-Balkar, Ismail Akbaev, based in Temir-Khan-Shura (Buynaksk), first standardized the Karachay-Balkar Arabic alphabet and published a book titled "A teaching aid for initial teaching of children to write and read". In 1915, a syndicate of teachers from the religious and secular schools of Karachay commissioned Akbaev to develop a national script. The result of this was a primer published in 1916, titled "Ana tili" (آنا تیلی). After the October Revolution, initially as part of the soviet policy of standardization of school curicculum and public education, the standard Arabic alphabet for Karachay-Balkar was refined once more, in the 2nd edition of "Ana tili" (آنا تیلی) being published by Ismail Akbaev in 1921. Later, as part of a new state campaign of Latinisation Karachay and Balkar educators developed a new alphabet based on Latin letters, being officially adopted in 1924. In the 1930s, the official Soviet policy was revised and the process of Cyrillization of Soviet languages was started. In 1937–38 the new alphabet based on Cyrillic letters was officially adopted, which remains the official alphabet for Karachay-Balkar up till today.

Cyrillic alphabet

Modern Karachay–Balkar Cyrillic alphabet:

Latin alphabet

Karachay–Balkar Latin alphabet:

Arabic alphabet

Prior to 1925, for centuries, the Arabic alphabet was the basis of the literary language among Karachay-Balkar. Be it in he form of Ottoman Turkish in the Caucasus and among the diaspora in Turkey, or be it the Cuman language, the Turkic lingua franca of the Caucasus and Southern Russia for a few centuries, and more closely related to Karachay-Balkar itself. From the early 20th century, there was attempts to bring the writing closer to the spoken dialects and languages among the Karachay and Balkar. As mentioned, the first successul national attempt at standadization of the alphabet was done in 1916. The second and final attempt was done in 1921, in a pubished primer, both done by Islael Akbaev. In the first iteration, Arabic maintained the original spelling, with homphone letters continued being used and vowels not fully shown, just as in Arabic orthography. In the second attempt, the use of vowels became more consistent and fully-encompassing, the initial alef letter was dropped (similar to Kazakh Arabic alphabet in the same era. Furthermore, the Arabic letters that had the same pronunciation in Karachay-Balkar were dropped and consolidated (For example the letters ث and ص were dropped in favour of the letter س);with the exception of the letter ع representing a glottal stop, and the letters that represent the sounds [~]. Below table lists the 1921 iteration of the Karachay-Balkar Arabic Alphabet, containing 34 letters.

Note

Comparison chart

Grammar

Nominals

Cases

Possessive suffixes

Vocabulary

Numerals

Loanwords

Loanwords from Russian, Ossetian, Kabardian, Arabic, and Persian are fairly numerous.

In popular culture

Russian filmmaker Andrei Proshkin used Karachay–Balkar for The Horde, believing that it might be the closest language to the original Kipchak language which was spoken during the Golden Horde.

Sample text

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Karachay–Balkar: