Svan language
The Svan language (Lushnu nin in Svan, Svanuri ena in Georgian) is a language spoken in Northwest Georgia.
Distribution
Svan is the native language of about 40,000 people living in the mountains of Svaneti, i.e. in the districts of Mestia and Lentekhi of Georgia, along the rivers Enguri, Cxenistskali, and Kodori.
The language is used in familiar and casual social communication. It has no written standard or official status; most speakers also speak Georgian, the country's official language, and use it as their literary and business language. There is no official instruction in Svan, and the number of speakers is declining.
History
Svan is the most differentiated member of the four South Caucasian (Kartvelian) languages, and is not intelligible with the other three (Georgian, Laz, and Megrelian). Svan is believed to have separated from them in the 3rd millennium BC or earlier, about one thousand years before Georgian branched off from the other two.
Features
Familial features
Like all languages of the South Caucasian family, Svan has a large number of consonants. It has agreement between subject and object, and a split-ergative morphosyntactic system. Verbas are marked for aspect, evidentiality and "version".
Distinguishing featurs
Svan retains the consonant /q/ (voiceless aspirated stop), and the glides /w/ and /y/. It has a larger repertoire of vowels than Georgian. Its morphology is less regular than that of the other three sister languages, and there are notable differences in verbal inflections.
Dialects
The Svan language is divided into the following dialects and sub-dialects:
- Upper Bal (about 15,000 speakers)
- Ushgul
- Kala
- Ipar
- Mulakh
- Mestia
- Lenzer
- Latal
- Lower Bal (about 12,000 speakers)
- Becho
- Tskhumar
- Etser
- Par
- Chubekh
- Lakham
- Lashkh
- Lentekh
- Kheled
- Khopur
- Rtskhmelur
- Cholur
Books
- Kevin Tuite, Svan. Université de Montréal. ISBN 389586154-5.
External links
- Svan at TITUS database
- ECLING - Svan (includes audio/video samples).