Abkhaz-Adyge
5 languages
Abkhaz-Adyge is a language family of 5 languages; the most are spoken in Türkiye, Russia, Syria, Jordan, and Israel.
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The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Circassic, Abkhazo–Circassian, Abkhazo–Adyghe, North Pontic, or sometimes Pontic languages (from Ancient Greek, pontos, referring to the Black Sea, in contrast to the Northeast Caucasian languages as the Caspian languages), is a family of languages spoken in the northwestern Caucasus region, chiefly in three Russian republics (Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia), the disputed territory of Abkhazia, Georgia, and Turkey, with smaller communities scattered throughout the Middle East.
The group's relationship to any other language family is uncertain and unproven. One language, Ubykh, became extinct in 1992, while all of the other languages are in some form of endangerment, with UNESCO classifying all as either "vulnerable", "endangered", or "severely endangered". Within the Northwest Caucasian languages, only Abkhaz has a first-set code in the ISO 639 standard.
The Northwest Caucasian languages possess highly complex sets of consonant distinctions paired with a lack of vowel distinctions, often providing archetypical cases of vertical vowel systems, also known as "linear" vowel systems.
From Wikipedia · Northwest Caucasian languages · CC BY-SA 4.0