As a Circassian, I thank you for taking the time to not only dissect the different languages but the history and causes for them including the context of each people and their interaction with each other in ancient and recent history. This video was part linguistics, part geopolitics, part anthropology, part history, and most of all a part of my people and ancestry.
@Beycan Han I believe the Ubykh are one of the tribes of Circassians whose dialect went extinct in the past few decades. It is good to speak with you, brother.
Ioseb Dzamukashvili there weren't any barbarians, but there WERE native Americans, who had - and continue to have - beautifully unique languages and cultures.
He just made it artificially complicated. All languages in Caucasus region can be divided into language families in more reasonable, simple way: 1. Indo-European; 2. Turkic; 3. Kartvelian; 4. Northwest Caucasian; and 5. Northeast Caucasian.
"All". Plus Mongolic and AA/Semitic, counted in the papers I've read (Chirikba, Catford, ...). What's more, the entire diversity of the three indigenous families is contained within the region. The representation of Indo-European and Turkic branches is incredibly varied. This is not a simple area.
it's still a lot of individual languages and 5 basic language families in such a small area is actually pretty unusual. Also Kalmyk which is very close by brings in a 6th family with mongolic
Ginni Hamadan Well, not actually that simple. While the situation in South Caucasus is simpler (there are only 3 major language groups: Indo-European (Armenian), Turkic (Azeri) and Kartvelian (Georgian, Megrelian and Svan)), North Caucasian languages - Northwest and Northeast Caucasian language families consists of lots of smaller language groups ( Avar-Andic, Dargic, Khinalug, Lak, Lezgic, Nakh, Tsezic, Circassian, Abazgi, Ubykh, etc.). There is also Russian language in North Caucasus (Since Russia invaded that area and now it's part of their federation), but it is not considered as indigenous language in Caucasus region.
+Nick Elson it's true 5 families don't look that complicated, but let me tell you, as a lezgin, I can't understand shit when the neighbouring avars speak, let alone chechens. I mean even being in the same family, the differences are much more significant than in, say languages of romance family.
I am also from Caucasus from northern Azerbaijan. I am a TSAKHUR. Similar to many North Caucasian languages, Tsakhur language is known for its complex phonology and a large number of vowel phonemes (including 7 simple, 5 pharyngealized and 3 umlauted wovels) Tsakhur language has 18 grammatical cases and has retained suffixaufnahme. Verbs may have singular and plural form, and 7 grammatical moods. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsakhur_language
I'm impressed by how many people from the Caucasus have found their way to this video. In every day life, most of the world never hears any of your voices.
Tsakhur is a Lezgic language, which makes you indigenous to the Cucauses, and one of the 26 tribes of Caucasian Albania, your alphabet is errily similar to Armenian & the original Caucasian Albanian alphabet.Both alphabets were developed by Masrob Mashtots of Armenia. Genertically one of the closest people to Armenians are the Lezgins.
finally someone using the word 'Caucasian' for its true meaning, instead of defining skin color. btw! please do Eskimo's next! i wanna know what their languages sound like.
Yep USA poorly defines people's racial origin and ethnic background terribly big time. Like for example calling mixed blood american indians (truly known as mestizo) from south of the US border the "hispanic race."
I am an Avar from Dagestan, and out language is very cool and strange. It has some grammar clauses that I havent seen in other languages. We have so many consonants. Some of then are impossible to pronounce for a foreigner. Our language is ergative. It is difficult to understand the idea of ergativity. It is opposite of accusative case. And also we have 16 grammar cases in avar language. Tabasaran language of Dagestan has 40(!) cases.
The Clichést Cliché Ever we call our language Магlарул мацl ( Ma£arul matztz). literal translation is "language of mountains". And we call ourselves "Maarulal" which means "people of mountains, highlanders"
John Smith yes we learn our languages at schools and also we learn russian. We know both our native language and Russian, though they are unbelievably completely different.
No mention of Mingrelian, Laz, and Svan languages? There are actually four Kartvelian languages; it's not only Georgian. You even mentioned Adjarian _dialect_, but none of those _languages_... Anyway, awesome video!
The difference between a language and a dialect (or accent) is not linguistic, it is political. אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט - Max Weinreich A language is a dialect with an army and navy - Max Weinreich
I have Circassian roots and have never came across such profound representation of our culture on TH-cam. Mountains really do matter to us and still are a big part of our identity. I talk a little bit of Ossetian and Kabardian which were passed down to me by my family and it's really nice to see them recognized by a Westerner language nerd. Thank you so much for the amazing content.
There are quite a few of us in the West who appreciate the cultural diversity (including some of the very intruiging traditions) of your region. Yes, we tend to be the types with advanced degrees in languages or history. However, for me, there's the additional appeal of regions of Eurasia that were NEVER talked about when I was a child because you part of the Soviet Union and all the attention was on Russians (who seemed mysterious enough!) And then ... I saw a traditional Circassian dance ... It was like a window to a whole other cultural world was suddenly opened up. :) P.S. (I realize your roots might come from the Circassian diaspora in Turkey, but to me Circassia is still in the Northwest of the Caucasus.)
In Azerbaijan there is a village Khinalig which is located on mountains about 2300 metres from sea level and they have own language which is included in UN language list as a language under thread of extinction.
It's Called Khinalug. The language and people are named after it. Currently Severely Endangered by The Atlas of The world's Languages in Danger, it is like any language in Caucasian.
These languages and Basque are the only living languages that predate the Indo-European migration. It's amazing to see how mountains can protect and preserve these languages so that we can have a better look into what Neolithic European languages may have sounded like.
Ęÿūį Æßñ Don't Basque people have the tradition of matadors? can't remember the name when the guy tries to kill raging bull? If so there is an old Georgian game (IF you can call it a game lol) that a person has to wrestle a raging bull but we didn't kill it as far as I know, it's called kuruli (კურული), I can give you wikipeadia link but it's in Georgian. ka.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%83%99%E1%83%A3%E1%83%A0%E1%83%A3%E1%83%9A%E1%83%98 You can you translator to translate it I think, sadly as far as I know we don't play that game anymore.
@@ЛидияГромова-ч6ц I've seen Minoan art that looks like it portrays a version of bull sports, too. Right in between Caucasus and Portugal. It was probably a widespread and ancient tradition - Portugal to Caucasus is a huge area! They must've been tough people to do this for sport, especially when you call the ambulance and a priest shows up, or some guy with torture tools. I'm assuming it was macho youths (like rugby or American football players) who performed this feat, and not slaves or prisoners, at least prior to a culture's decadence... that's the only way it could make sense to me, but I didn't come from their frame of reference.
A lot of "educational" channels seem to just read headlines of articles and post it as a fact. Danger Dolan is probably the most infamous before they turned into a bizarre fetish channel.
Thank you for this comprehensive and beautiful video! As a half-Circassian born in Turkey to an assimilated family with no knowledge of any Circassian languages, I try to pick up anything I come across on the internet. But it's hard to find quality material on the topic. Yours is a true gem. I love how you start with relatively less related material like Georgia in the US (lol) and build up from there, connecting everything beautifully and giving the emphasis on Caucasian languages in the second half of the video. I felt a bit impatient waiting for Circassian to be honest, but it was worth it. And kudos to the 'homage' to Tevfik Esenç, the last speaker of Ubykh. It's sad that such a unique language became extinct so recently.
If you're into mythology, I recommend "Nart Sagas of the Caucasus" by Colarusso. It's in a way similar to Greek and Roman myths, and even norse mythology, but with a very interesting twist and flair.
"inbred anatolians" you say but dont forget that it was the inbred anatolians who saved caucasians ass by saving them. Ottoman turks saved these poor circassian by allowing them to settle in turkey. As for the Kurds, you are right.
Fun-ish fact: at our institute you can get credit points for taking Basque classes if you're doing a Caucasian linguistics degree. Because no-one knows what extant languages (if any) Basque is actually related to, and typologically it fits in well enough with the Caucasian languages, so that guess is as good as any :v
Ok so the second commenter on this comment commented about a video link about Basque of another great youtuber, but looking back at these comments, it isn't there anymore for some reason. So, I'll just recomment it, but without link (which was maybe the reason why it got removed?). Just look up this vid: "Basque - A Language of Mystery" and it's from the great language channel "LangFocus". Hope this helps!
3:25 as a russian speaker I dig that pretty good pronunciation of "дверь". I've always been interested in linguistics and I was so happy when I found you. It is a great channel you have here, keep it up and thank you! ❤
Learning Georgian is one of my linguistic dreams and I'm looking for a Georgian language summer course in Tiblisi. If you happen to know something about one, please let me know. Nice video. Congrats! :)
This video was super short. There are more than 100 languages in the region of Caucasus. Just in my Dagestan there are 42 languages. 15 of them are official that have their own schoolbooks, radio and newspapers.
lol stop buddy ... most of them have like few hundred users ... do you speak Nakh i , or Vai Nakh .. i assume Vai Nakh and you don't even Know what Nakh i or Nae Makh is ... also Dualian or D'Valian or even D'eulian .. or D'evar' , D'e'ual language .. XD
Great channel! Thank you for it) My name is Shamil. I'm from Dagestan. My father is Avarian and mother is Kumykian (if its written correctly). Those languages are totally different. Avarian is more difficult for spell, sounds like Arabian, but much harder)) and Kumykian is one of Turkician family, by the way, we have 33 different sub nationalities up there with their own languages.
Excellent video, and you end up learning some fascinating history too. It helps to watch several times to absorb everything. The Caucasus region is certainly a "crazy-quilt" of interesting languages!
I was born in Mineralnye Vody in the Caucasus and I really appreciate you making a video about my birth land! It's such a unique place that embodies pluralism and linguistic diversity. The top notch quality of your videos has earned you a new sub ;) Since your channel almost has 'native' in it, would you be able to do a video about the Native American/Canadian languages please?
I am a Laz from Turkey and I waited you for mentioning Laz, Megrelian and Svan languages but you didn't. They are different languages from Georgian. NENAÇKUNİ VA ĞURASEN
Wow! This is such a packed video! More linguistic features than I've ever heard of in that area, and it's pretty interesting to see how the channel has covered most of them in other contexts. Also, I loved the connections between geography and linguistics. I seem to recall having read something on Scientific American's website last year about how climate influences the evolution of tonal languages, as humid climates help make the pronunciation of tones distinct, I think. I'd also like to repeat my request for a video on the Dardic languages, which I made in the comments on the video on Tsakonikan Greek - but your videos on any and every topic are so incredible that I don't really care too much. Looking forward to Irish and other Celtic languages here!
I don't think I've ever been more pleasantly surprised by a NativLang video. I've been meaning to add (or at least set-up for later expansion) a fifth and final conlang to my mythos. I wanted one that had a contrasting sound to what I already have which include simple phonotactics with basic CV syllables (or (V)VC for 'Xelsunuin) and a conlang with an extensive vowel/diphthong inventory. This leaves me with one that has an extensive consonant inventory without much in the way of vowels. Ubykh fits just that. Also, if I may say, I'd love to see a video on an Inuit language such as Inuktitut.
The Republic of Kalmykia is such a fascinating place! While I knew that Buddhism spread far and wide during the centuries after the Lord Buddha's death (as far west as Greece, Afghanistan and parts of Turkey), I had no idea that there was still a semi-autonomous region in Eastern Europe that is still predominantly Buddhist. Great video!
I came across this video by accident, while researching something else, but have to tell you that the 'something else' had to wait as I, with glued fascination, watched it to the end. Thank you so much for posting this information and in such a well presented way. I rarely subscribe to anything, but I am going to do so to make sure I don't forget this site.
@Random Person Georgians Chechnians and Circassians Dagestanis And Ingushetians are The Real Caucasians... armenians and Azerbaijanis Just Came Few Thousand Years Ago But We... We Are Autoctonus People... And According To History Georgia Is The First Country In Caucasia So...
@Random Person First Of all... We Are Not Dark... And Please... We All Know That Georgians are Only Real Caucasians In South Caucasus... And According To History. If Not Georgia All Of North Caucasian People Would Not Exist. And BTW, Kavkasieli(In Georgian) Must Be Free... That Is What Our Fathers Taught Us. And Which One Of North Caucasians Are Free???! And If We Are South Of The Mountain Than You Are North Of The Mountain... None Of Us Is On The Great Caucasia... Both Of Us Are North Or South Of It.
+Sam Abesh That great my friend. I was brought up in a neighborhood where a lot of Circassians live. I love and respect my Circassian friends, they are indeed among the most civilized people I've known. I even attended Circassian culture classes with them. For Адига! :)
As a Kurdish person, I was so pleasantly surprised to hear you mention a Kurdish quote in the beginning! I also enjoyed learning about all the many languages and history of the Caucasus Mountains :) Out of curiosity, can you make a video about the Kurdish language and its dialects? I speak Sorani and am from the West Iran area of Kurdistan, but there are other dialects too--as you probably already know :) Kurdistan is one of the world's largest ethnic groups without a state, but we have our own language, culture, and history. I also learned a little about its rich history and how Kurdistan was an empire before it got split up by Britain. It would be cool if you could make a video about Kurdistan! P.S. I would put a Kurdistan flag emoji but they haven't released one yet
@ 0:05 Actually, the Caucasus is not where "Europe smacks into Asia". That would be the Urals. Until I knew my geography better I used to confuse the Caucasus with the Urals. Now I know that the Caucasus mountains are between the Black and Caspian seas. The Caucasus is the uplift range where Arabia smacks into Eurasia.
A video about the *Uralic languages* would be nice to see here! Or at least a video about the *Finnic languages* (Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, Veps etc.)...
There are no evidence that the Uralic languages are related to either Turkic, Mongolic, or any other languages spoken in Siberia, Manchuria, Korea, Japan and so on. The only common thing they have are loanwords shared by each other.
Yes! Would be interesting to see :) My people (Maori) are descendants of Taiwanese Aborigines, so I'm pretty curious about their languages, would also be awesome to see a video about Polynesian languages :)
Ivatan, the indigenous langauge spoken in the Bataan islands in the northernmost province of the Philippines, are cousins of the Aboriginal Taiwanese languages. In the mainland (Philippines), no one can understand them since they are technically in a different subgroup of their own in the Malayo-Polynesian family. Example: Umsi ava su vahusa u kamates. (Eggplants do not grow tomatoes). Quote source Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivatan_language).
Some years ago, a linguist friend told me that at one time long ago, every fjord along the west coast of Canada had a different tribe of native people. And the language of each tribe was as different from each other as English is from Chinese.
Wow! thank you so much. I asked you to do a video about caucasian languages in the comments of your last video, I didn't expect you to even notice that among all the other requests, and answer it so quickly! thanks a lot NativeLang.
My father is a mountain Jew from Dagestan. When he was kid there, his parents' generation of the family spoke a dialect of Persian called Juhuri. It's cool you touched on this region.
Latin word for King Rex,Rey,Regain,Reign,Roy,Royal and Germanic Rix,Ric and Rick are all related to Indo-Aryan words like Raj or Raja etc etc though PIE so not surprising.
Your best video ever. I went to University in japan in the 80s But for the last 5 years I have been teaching (and i hope learning) in Turkey. This summer I begin a 2 year adventure studying in Georgia. This video got me all excited
Keep doing your content. One of the best channels on TH-cam right here. I had a "normal" level of interest in language before starting to watch your things. You've made me a complete nerd. :)
@@MegaRedada убыхи считали себя адыгами и говорили на адыгском языке. Всё убыхи сегодня считают себя адыгами и говорят на адыгском и не имеют отношения к абхазам.
There are a bunch of resources on all sorts of Papuan languages, of many different families. A video on the core branches of Trans-NG shouldn't be hard at all. Comparing New Guinea to the Sentinel Islands is going way overboard.
OH BOI i got into Papua recently and it was just... i hate the fact that 1. No one pays attention to them 2. The Wiki pages of most of them are super smol
Interesting video (as always), though I have to agree somewhat with the other commenters complaining that it's a bit rambling. Hey!!! Is 7:04 a citation of Aert H. Kuipers? That's my (parents') old neighbour. I do recall him telling about Caucasian languages once. Also about the difficulty posed by the roots not appearing to have any vowels, and the discussions he'd had about the existence of a (proto-) language with no vowels at all. I'm _so_ glad his work is still relevant today! He was such an amazing man; quite reclusive, yet very sociable. When asked, he could talk at length about the most diverse subjects -- mathematics, Japanese art, 19th century pianists, the many quirks of Slavic people (his wife, who lived in Canada, was Ukrainian by birth, and he himself taught Slavic languages at Leiden University). But his real passion was for languages. Upon retiring, he first spent some 15 years finishing his English Salish dictionary, before finally getting to learn Mandarin; something he'd wanted to do ever since walking through Chinatown in New York when he was teaching there (somewhere in the 1950s, I think). I first met him when he was already aged 74; a nephew had left him a computer, and he'd heard I knew a thing or two about them. (Back then, I used to help people with computer problems after school). I explained to him how to turn it on, start Windows, & told him of drives and disks. He appeared interested, so I mentioned in passing that QBasic could be used for programming. When I met him again a week later, he'd written his first piece of software! 74 years old! He passed away a few years ago.
The very same! It's cool to read this personal background. It gives some depth to the person behind the simple name, date, idea citations I encountered while researching the video. Thank you for sharing.
Oh wow, 50 languages across 7 families....do you have any books or sources that you can suggest us for further exploration about languages? I would love to know more in details and actually with word comparisons. Thanks in advance and happy to be a fan of your channel!
Thanks a lot for a such great video! I was very much impressed, cause I just wanted you to make a video on the Dagestanian languages, but this one is even greater, than I could imagine!!
Great work as always! What do you think about the Altaic family hypothesis? I'd love to eventually see a video about the similarities between Japonic, Koreanic, Mongolic, Turkic and Tungustic language families! That and something about Ainu!
Altaic... sounds like another epic video covering a lot of languages! I didn't realize how much of a difference it would make to include Ainu just once in the video, but, wow, I love to see so many requests for it!
Ainu is exciting as language isolates tend to be, Also the idea of a language using an adapted katakana as its sole script is super cool to me. Whatever you make though I'll be here to watch it, thanks for responding!
Altaic has been mostly dis-proven and these languages are probably a spachbund rather then related. And example would be how Turkic,Mongolic and Tungusic share vast amounts of vocabulary but it becomes less and less the more you go back in time which doesnt make sense if they were genetically related languages. Some shared vocabulary- Korean- Tangun(old Korean is Tanga) Turkic-Tengri Mongolic-Tenger Tungusic Enduri English- Deity/God Korean- Han Turkic-Khan/Han Mongolic-Khan/han Tungusic- Kan/Han English- Master or tribal chief/ Minor King
This is extremely fascinating and beautiful but so SO daunting. Languages are so complicated it’s wonderful but i’ll never get my head round them fully.
Fascinating, entertaining, and enlightening, as always. Over time, I'd love to see you dive into each family, but most of all, I'd love to see a more in depth discussion on ergativity. Ever since I read about Diné Bizaad grammar, I have been intrigued, and wish to learn more. I think it would be well suited to your cartoons, and not too dry.
I'd be very pleased to see you make a video about the Albanian language, and how it descends from Illyrian dialects. Though I know it would be challenging, as there are not many examples of Illyrian literature surviving.
I've recently become interested in Abkhaz. The bit that caught my attention was the way in which it adapts both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. At times, it almost seems like it has more unique Abkhazian letters than letters from it's parent scripts!
You should make a video about the Circassian language only, with it's unique sounds in it's different dialects and about how ancient it is, about the old alphabet, and about how the history was passed through laments when they had not time to write because of the life they lived that was full of wars and conflicts. Thanks for this awesome video, always great to hear these lovely languages of the Caucasus, thumbs up.
@@arinaa4809 Me too, but then when I studied translation I learned about the isogloss which separates the dialects in a region. Back in time, people couldn't travel so far and some stayed in the same village their whole life. So they formed different dialects. :D
@@arinaa4809 Yes, that's true. Germany is a lot flatter than Switzerland. So the dialects spread wider in flat regions than in regions with more mountains. :)
From the book "How to Learn a Foreign Language" by Paul Pimsleur: "Linguists tell us that no known language is composed of fewer sounds than Hawaiian, which has fifteen, or more than certain languages of the Caucasus, which have up to sixty. Most languages fall somewhere between these two extremes; English and French, for example, have thirty-one sounds."
Those mountains must be a pain in the ass for invaders. Notice how other isolated languiages, such as Basque and Albanian are spoken in mountainous terrain.
Random Person it took them a lot more. Those suckers have been putting their noses in all kinds of places for centuries and are now occupying 20% of Georgia. Let my country rest.
In Tsova-Tush, the sentence: ”As vuiž-n-as.” even *_SOUNDS_* phonetically more involved, than: ”So vož-en-so.” I’m guessing it has to do with the diphthong ”ui” in ”vuiž”, and the ”vowel-consonant” -syllable ”as”, as well as the two consonants, ”ž” and ”n” in a row; compared to the simple vowel ”o” in ”vož”, and the ”consonant-vowel” -syllable ”so”, as well as the vowel ”e” breaking the consonant cluster ”ž-n” -> ”ž-en”. The latter just phonetically sounds more passive and relaxed. It even has more harmonizing vowels: 3 * ”o” + ”e” vs. 2 * ”a” + ”u” + ”i”. IDK, I’m weird like that. 🤔
My wife grew up in Switzerland. She speaks Zuri-dootch. There is Basel-dootch, etc. The Swiss-speaking population can tell where a person is from down to a particular valley by accent. (Or could, as the differences are getting flattened out under immigration and mass communication.) Another interesting phenomena is with the advent of texting and blogging; Swiss, which was never a written language, is now getting transliterated by the populace, crowd-sourcing orthography.
You have forgot to notice, that we have in Georgia two other languages : Megrelian ( in the region- Samegrelo) and Svanuri (in the region- Svaneti) languages.
*1:46* English: Door; Kurdish: Deri; Ossetian: Duar; Armenian: Dur; Georgian: Kari -_- In Georgia alone, the country under half the size of state with the same name, we have 4 totally distinct and different languages: Traditional Georgian, Megrelian, Svanuri/Swanian and Abkhazian (Abkhazia is Technically not a part of Georgia anymore it's independent now ;_;) *3:32* Long ago, this was not theirs, but it was ours! Sochi -is- *_WAS_* A Georgian city *T_T.*
i'm a circassian and what you said was true !! as much as i know that the modern circassian language is a mix between Ubykh and abazian lang, due to our traditions we removed the whole gender barrier which left us without he and she ! the circassian flag contains 12 stars, 1 star for each tribe, but that doesn't mean that you 12 accents, only 4 were used and the were very similar to each other. the circassians are the Adigas btw, there's no difference or what so ever, kabardins are just a tribe, the new historians divided us and made some new names. surprisingly, after the Russo - circassian war ended back in 1864, many circassians were deported to the turkey, and the ottoman empire gov relocated the circassians over the middle east, like Jordan, Syria and israel !!
Hebrew yoxdu Azərbaycanda. Buradakı Yahudiler tat(juhuri lehçesi) ve rus dillərində danışırlar. Tat dilində dağ yəhudiləri, rus dilində de Avropa Yahudileri danışır.
@Baxışoff avar eşitməmişəm amma dağ (qorski) yahudiləri hamısı tatca danışır, öz ləhcələri var tat dilidən cuhuri deyirlər. TH-camda mahnıları da çoxdur, elə digər tatlar da rahat başa düşürlər ləhclərini. Evropeyski yahudilər də rus dilində danışırlar. Amma avar dilində danışmağı ilk dəfədir sizdən eşidirəm.
Hello From Georgia (საქართველო) In Kartvelian Language there are also 3 groups: Svan, Megrelian and Laz (Megrelian and Laz had common language in Acnient times). not talking about dialects:D
So the Caucasus is the Papua of the Near East, and like Papua is straddles the line between two continents. A fascinating place indeed, I have a friend who's half Georgian and from what he's told me about his mother's homeland it seems like a cultural oddity in many ways, its language being one of them.
I am Armenian on my Fathers side & Georgian on my Mothers Inb many ways we are very similar, but also very different One thing for sure Armenians & Georgians are the backbone of Christianity in the region for almost 2000 years
Such a beautiful video, man. I never realized the extent of the range of languages there. You should make a video of you actually going there and collect samples of speech from those regions, analyze, and with a linguist who specializes in those languages, come and talk about it with us! Subscribed!
OMG please do Ainu. I REALLY hope it was included in there as some sort of weird hint. Oh, my god, there's so much to talk about there and it's just so cool! I've got Ainu dictionaries I'd love people to just see how cool of a language and culture it is in one of your videos.
Only brief jabs (the Mesoamerica Sprachbund vid for example) and an old series on alignment (more of a linguistics 101 lecture, and one with errors). I had a long paragraph here in my notes, but I cut it to keep the story moving. I need to find a way to make ergativity entertaining...
Well, maybe the existence of ergativity in Basque and this being a point for the theory that relates Basque and Aquitanian to some languages of the Caucasus area could be of some interest.
There's no reason to postulate that the existence of ergativity in Basque and Caucasian languages would be evidence of a genetic relationship. Languages all over the world are Erg-Abs, including many Indo-Aryan languages, which we know for sure aren't related to Basque or Caucasian languages.
HobomanCat1 It's been regarded as one main piece of evidence for some experts though. I would not align to that theory as in my opinion it's been widely discredited, but the theory exists and has its supporters.
No credible linguists today would subscribe to Sino-Dene-Caucasian or whatever it's called. The comparative method only really works until around 10,000 years back, so a link between the languages would be so far back in time that there wouldn't be any evidence today.
Probably you asked if I'm from Paraguayo)) No, I;m from Ukraine but your language is extrmely captivating and there's no good content on the Internet on this topic)
Oh, thought you were Brazilian, sorry. I wrote in my first comment that It'd be very interesting a video in where he explores the whole tupi-guarani family tree, like he did in this one with the caucasian languages.
In the small space where Azerbaijan meets the Caucus mountains in the north there a place called the red hills or the red mountains in Russian and Azeris call it Kuba. It’s a small village where Gorsky Jews lived (and still do) and they speak, you guessed it, gorsky.
Great video! Your content is always informative and enjoyable to watch! If you ever plan on making a video about the Armenian language, I would be more than happy to help.
@@giorgijioshvili9713 "Mekrilistan" was a country mentioned in a travel journal/book "seyahatname" written by Evliya Çelebi. With a quick google search of Megrelian, I think Mekrilistan was the region Mingrelia.
Mingrelian is wrong. it's not English, Russians are saying like that. It is Megrelian (Megruli/Margaluri) that's how it is native language. "მინგრელია"ზე ყლეობა ჯერ არაფერი მსმენია რუსების დამახინჯებულია.
I find it odd that white, Jewish and Arab Americans have to list themselves as Caucasian on the census, when in fact only the Jews and a handful of eastern Europeans even remotely qualify. I am only 1% Caucasian. Yet my bloodline is almost completely European. How does that work?
Google "Caucasoid race" or simply Caucasian race. It's all in the skull shape which determines race (Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid). Caucasian doesn't necessarily mean european white. Most people do not know this though. However, this is somewhat deemed controversial, despite the research behind it. Also, Europeans are Caucasian.
I really enjoyed this video. You’re really able to explain this clearly. I do read a lot of books concerning languages out of interest, but most of the time, I read a paragraph twice because I’m not able to comprehend it at first. Due to my fascination with phonetics, I especially found your information about Ubykh helpful. How interesting that they only have the open central unrounded vowel and the schwa!
I’m from Iraq and my fathers ancestors are Dagestani. They lived in northern Iraq in the city of Mosul. I don’t know which particular ethnicity he is from though.
Tolstoi began his war experience at Sevastopol during the Crimean War. He wrote a novel about it. Also Lermontov wrote "Hero of our Time" which features fighting against the Chechens. Nothing changes.
Can you please do a video about the 4 dialects of Wenzhou, China. It has been called a 'living fossil,' very remnant of ancient archaic Chinese, and also the devil's tongue as it's hard for Chinese speakers to understand or pronounce. It's so hard to understand that it was the language for relaying messages in secret like Najavo during WWII. Thank you for your amazing videos. Keep it up. :)
As a Circassian, I thank you for taking the time to not only dissect the different languages but the history and causes for them including the context of each people and their interaction with each other in ancient and recent history. This video was part linguistics, part geopolitics, part anthropology, part history, and most of all a part of my people and ancestry.
Support to you brother from România!!!!
I really loved it!
@Beycan Han I believe the Ubykh are one of the tribes of Circassians whose dialect went extinct in the past few decades. It is good to speak with you, brother.
Ubykh was extinct after Tevfik Esenç, at time of death, was the last speaker and can also speak Turkish and Adygean.
"OTHER" Georgia is in the US, not the other way around
yes this annoyed me a little -.-
It all depends on your perspective.
me too :)
Ioseb Dzamukashvili there weren't any barbarians, but there WERE native Americans, who had - and continue to have - beautifully unique languages and cultures.
killing people for nothing sounds like something everyone does and still continues to do
I knew that the Caucasus has a lot of languages. but thats more than i expected.
He just made it artificially complicated.
All languages in Caucasus region can be divided into language families in more reasonable, simple way:
1. Indo-European;
2. Turkic;
3. Kartvelian;
4. Northwest Caucasian; and
5. Northeast Caucasian.
"All". Plus Mongolic and AA/Semitic, counted in the papers I've read (Chirikba, Catford, ...). What's more, the entire diversity of the three indigenous families is contained within the region. The representation of Indo-European and Turkic branches is incredibly varied. This is not a simple area.
it's still a lot of individual languages and 5 basic language families in such a small area is actually pretty unusual. Also Kalmyk which is very close by brings in a 6th family with mongolic
Ginni Hamadan
Well, not actually that simple.
While the situation in South Caucasus is simpler (there are only 3 major language groups: Indo-European (Armenian), Turkic (Azeri) and Kartvelian (Georgian, Megrelian and Svan)),
North Caucasian languages - Northwest and Northeast Caucasian language families consists of lots of smaller language groups ( Avar-Andic, Dargic, Khinalug, Lak, Lezgic, Nakh, Tsezic, Circassian, Abazgi, Ubykh, etc.).
There is also Russian language in North Caucasus (Since Russia invaded that area and now it's part of their federation), but it is not considered as indigenous language in Caucasus region.
+Nick Elson it's true 5 families don't look that complicated, but let me tell you, as a lezgin, I can't understand shit when the neighbouring avars speak, let alone chechens. I mean even being in the same family, the differences are much more significant than in, say languages of romance family.
I am also from Caucasus from northern Azerbaijan. I am a TSAKHUR.
Similar to many North Caucasian languages, Tsakhur language is known for its complex phonology and a large number of vowel phonemes (including 7 simple, 5 pharyngealized and 3 umlauted wovels)
Tsakhur language has 18 grammatical cases and has retained suffixaufnahme. Verbs may have singular and plural form, and 7 grammatical moods.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsakhur_language
That is interesting, thanks for the link!
I'm impressed by how many people from the Caucasus have found their way to this video. In every day life, most of the world never hears any of your voices.
I'm also Tsakhur from north Azerbaijan,
Tsakhur is a Lezgic language, which makes you indigenous to the Cucauses, and one of the 26 tribes of Caucasian Albania, your alphabet is errily similar to Armenian & the original Caucasian Albanian alphabet.Both alphabets were developed by Masrob Mashtots of Armenia.
Genertically one of the closest people to Armenians are the Lezgins.
Tsakhur is a definitely endangered language in Russia's Dagestan.
finally someone using the word 'Caucasian' for its true meaning, instead of defining skin color.
btw! please do Eskimo's next! i wanna know what their languages sound like.
Yep USA poorly defines people's racial origin and ethnic background terribly big time. Like for example calling mixed blood american indians (truly known as mestizo) from south of the US border the "hispanic race."
@@fragolegirl2002 or simply using "Eskimo" instead of who they really are.
@@cpd182js Yep they are called inuit if not mistaken.
@@fragolegirl2002 All Inuit are Eskimo but not all Eskimo are Inuit
Other way around.
I am an Avar from Dagestan, and out language is very cool and strange. It has some grammar clauses that I havent seen in other languages. We have so many consonants. Some of then are impossible to pronounce for a foreigner. Our language is ergative. It is difficult to understand the idea of ergativity. It is opposite of accusative case. And also we have 16 grammar cases in avar language. Tabasaran language of Dagestan has 40(!) cases.
Ohh Avar is an Alien language! And Avari is one of the ethnic groups of Elves xD it seems really cool though, what do you call your language in Avar?
The Clichést Cliché Ever we call our language Магlарул мацl ( Ma£arul matztz). literal translation is "language of mountains". And we call ourselves "Maarulal" which means "people of mountains, highlanders"
Micober Ss dungi magharulaw))
How are the native languages of Dagestan doing? Are they surviving well?
John Smith yes we learn our languages at schools and also we learn russian. We know both our native language and Russian, though they are unbelievably completely different.
a proud circassian over here :) thanks for this informative video!
Same
No mention of Mingrelian, Laz, and Svan languages? There are actually four Kartvelian languages; it's not only Georgian. You even mentioned Adjarian _dialect_, but none of those _languages_...
Anyway, awesome video!
even Adjarian is not a dialect, it's just an accent
The difference between a language and a dialect (or accent) is not linguistic, it is political.
אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט - Max Weinreich
A language is a dialect with an army and navy - Max Weinreich
@@edgarnmarschalek5113 there is so much truth in that...
Tornike Khantadze ფერეიდნული ქართული აღმოსავლეთ ქართული დიალექტია, დამოუკიდებელი ენა არაა როგორც მეგრულ-ლაზური და სვანური.
MAGA TURK Турки Laz is a Georgian language not Turkish
I have Circassian roots and have never came across such profound representation of our culture on TH-cam. Mountains really do matter to us and still are a big part of our identity. I talk a little bit of Ossetian and Kabardian which were passed down to me by my family and it's really nice to see them recognized by a Westerner language nerd. Thank you so much for the amazing content.
There are quite a few of us in the West who appreciate the cultural diversity (including some of the very intruiging traditions) of your region. Yes, we tend to be the types with advanced degrees in languages or history. However, for me, there's the additional appeal of regions of Eurasia that were NEVER talked about when I was a child because you part of the Soviet Union and all the attention was on Russians (who seemed mysterious enough!)
And then ... I saw a traditional Circassian dance ... It was like a window to a whole other cultural world was suddenly opened up.
:)
P.S. (I realize your roots might come from the Circassian diaspora in Turkey, but to me Circassia is still in the Northwest of the Caucasus.)
In Azerbaijan there is a village Khinalig which is located on mountains about 2300 metres from sea level and they have own language which is included in UN language list as a language under thread of extinction.
😢😢
It's Called Khinalug. The language and people are named after it. Currently Severely Endangered by The Atlas of The world's Languages in Danger, it is like any language in Caucasian.
This was an area of the world I knew practically nothing about! Thanks for educating me!
These languages and Basque are the only living languages that predate the Indo-European migration. It's amazing to see how mountains can protect and preserve these languages so that we can have a better look into what Neolithic European languages may have sounded like.
Ęÿūį Æßñ
Don't Basque people have the tradition of matadors? can't remember the name when the guy tries to kill raging bull? If so there is an old Georgian game (IF you can call it a game lol) that a person has to wrestle a raging bull but we didn't kill it as far as I know, it's called kuruli (კურული), I can give you wikipeadia link but it's in Georgian.
ka.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%83%99%E1%83%A3%E1%83%A0%E1%83%A3%E1%83%9A%E1%83%98
You can you translator to translate it I think, sadly as far as I know we don't play that game anymore.
And the Uralic languages, like Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian.
It's called corrida, there's a Portuguese tradition of it too, and in Portugal they don't kill the bull
@@ЛидияГромова-ч6ц I've seen Minoan art that looks like it portrays a version of bull sports, too. Right in between Caucasus and Portugal. It was probably a widespread and ancient tradition - Portugal to Caucasus is a huge area! They must've been tough people to do this for sport, especially when you call the ambulance and a priest shows up, or some guy with torture tools. I'm assuming it was macho youths (like rugby or American football players) who performed this feat, and not slaves or prisoners, at least prior to a culture's decadence... that's the only way it could make sense to me, but I didn't come from their frame of reference.
@@masalias22 Hungarian doesnt predate indo europeans' arrival
Pretty good content here. A cut above other "educational" channels on youtube.
There's tough competition, so I humbly appreciate the compliment!
For me it's pretty bland and meh.
that's cool. make another channel that does it better and i'll watch.
He didn't say there were special better ordained by GOD languages so it's no good. >:P
...lol =D
A lot of "educational" channels seem to just read headlines of articles and post it as a fact. Danger Dolan is probably the most infamous before they turned into a bizarre fetish channel.
Thank you for this comprehensive and beautiful video! As a half-Circassian born in Turkey to an assimilated family with no knowledge of any Circassian languages, I try to pick up anything I come across on the internet. But it's hard to find quality material on the topic. Yours is a true gem.
I love how you start with relatively less related material like Georgia in the US (lol) and build up from there, connecting everything beautifully and giving the emphasis on Caucasian languages in the second half of the video. I felt a bit impatient waiting for Circassian to be honest, but it was worth it. And kudos to the 'homage' to Tevfik Esenç, the last speaker of Ubykh. It's sad that such a unique language became extinct so recently.
Bende yarı Çerkes, asimile olmuş ve Çerkesce bilmeyen bir ailedenim
If you're into mythology, I recommend "Nart Sagas of the Caucasus" by Colarusso.
It's in a way similar to Greek and Roman myths, and even norse mythology, but with a very interesting twist and flair.
I'm so happy as a Cirsassian (Adygean) to see this video. Thank you = Тхьэ уегъэпсэу = tħa wjɛʁɛpsɛw = May God keep you alive
"inbred anatolians" you say but dont forget that it was the inbred anatolians who saved caucasians ass by saving them. Ottoman turks saved these poor circassian by allowing them to settle in turkey. As for the Kurds, you are right.
Тхьэуегъэпсэу (тхьэм уегъэпсау) means 'May God give you perfection/ health' not May God keep you alive
@@juhuri6128 Хьэнапэжъ, апходэу жыпIэу хъунэкъым.
@Random Person Don't listen to him. I'm a Circassian and I don't hate nations. Peace ☮️
Thanks for using IPA
Really looking forward to a video on Basque.
Keep the great work!
MrAlvarogame Agreed
Reckless Roges this^ I also recommend that vid
Fun-ish fact: at our institute you can get credit points for taking Basque classes if you're doing a Caucasian linguistics degree. Because no-one knows what extant languages (if any) Basque is actually related to, and typologically it fits in well enough with the Caucasian languages, so that guess is as good as any :v
I've spent time in the Basque region and the language fascinated me. I agree, video please!
Ok so the second commenter on this comment commented about a video link about Basque of another great youtuber, but looking back at these comments, it isn't there anymore for some reason. So, I'll just recomment it, but without link (which was maybe the reason why it got removed?). Just look up this vid: "Basque - A Language of Mystery" and it's from the great language channel "LangFocus". Hope this helps!
3:25 as a russian speaker I dig that pretty good pronunciation of "дверь".
I've always been interested in linguistics and I was so happy when I found you. It is a great channel you have here, keep it up and thank you! ❤
Learning Georgian is one of my linguistic dreams and I'm looking for a Georgian language summer course in Tiblisi. If you happen to know something about one, please let me know. Nice video. Congrats! :)
Caucasus region is easily amongst the most interesting and diverse areas in the world.
This video was super short. There are more than 100 languages in the region of Caucasus. Just in my Dagestan there are 42 languages. 15 of them are official that have their own schoolbooks, radio and newspapers.
Well they do
But they literally can't do it in the Caucasus otherwise they will be kick in ass
John Smith "Circassian diaspora"
Brother X they did to caucasus actually
Your English is pretty good!
lol stop buddy ... most of them have like few hundred users ... do you speak Nakh i , or Vai Nakh .. i assume Vai Nakh and you don't even Know what Nakh i or Nae Makh is ... also Dualian or D'Valian or even D'eulian .. or D'evar' , D'e'ual language .. XD
Great channel! Thank you for it) My name is Shamil. I'm from Dagestan. My father is Avarian and mother is Kumykian (if its written correctly). Those languages are totally different. Avarian is more difficult for spell, sounds like Arabian, but much harder)) and Kumykian is one of Turkician family, by the way, we have 33 different sub nationalities up there with their own languages.
Excellent video, and you end up learning some fascinating history too. It helps to watch several times to absorb everything. The Caucasus region is certainly a "crazy-quilt" of interesting languages!
I was born in Mineralnye Vody in the Caucasus and I really appreciate you making a video about my birth land! It's such a unique place that embodies pluralism and linguistic diversity.
The top notch quality of your videos has earned you a new sub ;)
Since your channel almost has 'native' in it, would you be able to do a video about the Native American/Canadian languages please?
I am a Laz from Turkey and I waited you for mentioning Laz, Megrelian and Svan languages but you didn't. They are different languages from Georgian.
NENAÇKUNİ VA ĞURASEN
Hello laz brother from east georgia wish you all the best.
Very nice they are part of indo europeans or isolted ?
@@paries1014 laz is in the kartvelian language family which is isolated and not similar to any language.
THIS IS A KARTVELIAN LANGUAGES I'M SVAN!!!
@@sandrovaro chill mate no need to screaming
Wow! This is such a packed video! More linguistic features than I've ever heard of in that area, and it's pretty interesting to see how the channel has covered most of them in other contexts. Also, I loved the connections between geography and linguistics. I seem to recall having read something on Scientific American's website last year about how climate influences the evolution of tonal languages, as humid climates help make the pronunciation of tones distinct, I think.
I'd also like to repeat my request for a video on the Dardic languages, which I made in the comments on the video on Tsakonikan Greek - but your videos on any and every topic are so incredible that I don't really care too much. Looking forward to Irish and other Celtic languages here!
I don't think I've ever been more pleasantly surprised by a NativLang video. I've been meaning to add (or at least set-up for later expansion) a fifth and final conlang to my mythos. I wanted one that had a contrasting sound to what I already have which include simple phonotactics with basic CV syllables (or (V)VC for 'Xelsunuin) and a conlang with an extensive vowel/diphthong inventory. This leaves me with one that has an extensive consonant inventory without much in the way of vowels. Ubykh fits just that.
Also, if I may say, I'd love to see a video on an Inuit language such as Inuktitut.
The Impish Dullahan
Good for you
The Republic of Kalmykia is such a fascinating place! While I knew that Buddhism spread far and wide during the centuries after the Lord Buddha's death (as far west as Greece, Afghanistan and parts of Turkey), I had no idea that there was still a semi-autonomous region in Eastern Europe that is still predominantly Buddhist. Great video!
Что там очаровательного конченые менты и степь
I came across this video by accident, while researching something else, but have to tell you that the 'something else' had to wait as I, with glued fascination, watched it to the end. Thank you so much for posting this information and in such a well presented way. I rarely subscribe to anything, but I am going to do so to make sure I don't forget this site.
Great vid, thank you! Please make a video on Circassian (Adyghe) language sometime, would love to see it from you
Did you just say “Circassian”?? My obsession with Circassia and those stuff is going crazy....
HELLO IM FROM GEORGIA!!!
🇬🇪
საქართველოს გაუმარჯოს!
@Random Person Georgians Chechnians and Circassians Dagestanis And Ingushetians are The Real Caucasians... armenians and Azerbaijanis Just Came Few Thousand Years Ago But We... We Are Autoctonus People... And According To History Georgia Is The First Country In Caucasia So...
@@user-sj6og7wi2q According to history Kurds had a Muslim dynasty in southern Caucasus , Shadadids and Rawdids
Lovely greetings from Azerbaijan.❤
@Random Person First Of all... We Are Not Dark... And Please... We All Know That Georgians are Only Real Caucasians In South Caucasus... And According To History. If Not Georgia All Of North Caucasian People Would Not Exist. And BTW, Kavkasieli(In Georgian) Must Be Free... That Is What Our Fathers Taught Us. And Which One Of North Caucasians Are Free???! And If We Are South Of The Mountain Than You Are North Of The Mountain... None Of Us Is On The Great Caucasia... Both Of Us Are North Or South Of It.
@Random Person Oooooh... :D
Greetings from Russia. I am Karachay-Balkar (turkic caucasians) and my grandfather was georgian. Thx for video, really nice :)
გაგიმარჯოს
great video man,thanks for mentioning Circassian :)
Sam Abesh Agreed
Sam Abesh indeed, si qwash
+Sam Abesh there are many Circassians who live in Damascus since a very long time, maybe since 1800's
Anas Syria i know, i am a Circassian from Aleppo.
+Sam Abesh
That great my friend. I was brought up in a neighborhood where a lot of Circassians live. I love and respect my Circassian friends, they are indeed among the most civilized people I've known. I even attended Circassian culture classes with them. For Адига! :)
As a Kurdish person, I was so pleasantly surprised to hear you mention a Kurdish quote in the beginning! I also enjoyed learning about all the many languages and history of the Caucasus Mountains :) Out of curiosity, can you make a video about the Kurdish language and its dialects? I speak Sorani and am from the West Iran area of Kurdistan, but there are other dialects too--as you probably already know :)
Kurdistan is one of the world's largest ethnic groups without a state, but we have our own language, culture, and history. I also learned a little about its rich history and how Kurdistan was an empire before it got split up by Britain. It would be cool if you could make a video about Kurdistan!
P.S. I would put a Kurdistan flag emoji but they haven't released one yet
@ 0:05 Actually, the Caucasus is not where "Europe smacks into Asia". That would be the Urals. Until I knew my geography better I used to confuse the Caucasus with the Urals. Now I know that the Caucasus mountains are between the Black and Caspian seas. The Caucasus is the uplift range where Arabia smacks into Eurasia.
A video about the *Uralic languages* would be nice to see here!
Or at least a video about the *Finnic languages* (Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, Veps etc.)...
Agreed, would love something Finnish/Karelian.
Saami languages!
Slashplite I second your choice
There are no evidence that the Uralic languages are related to either Turkic, Mongolic, or any other languages spoken in Siberia, Manchuria, Korea, Japan and so on. The only common thing they have are loanwords shared by each other.
+Ginni Hamadan What research?
Could you do a video on Aboriginal Taiwanese languages?
alex cheng does it still exist to this day?
Yeah, more than 14 of them
Yes! Would be interesting to see :) My people (Maori) are descendants of Taiwanese Aborigines, so I'm pretty curious about their languages, would also be awesome to see a video about Polynesian languages :)
Ivatan, the indigenous langauge spoken in the Bataan islands in the northernmost province of the Philippines, are cousins of the Aboriginal Taiwanese languages. In the mainland (Philippines), no one can understand them since they are technically in a different subgroup of their own in the Malayo-Polynesian family.
Example: Umsi ava su vahusa u kamates. (Eggplants do not grow tomatoes). Quote source Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivatan_language).
I thought aboriginals were in australia?
Some years ago, a linguist friend told me that at one time long ago, every fjord along the west coast of Canada had a different tribe of native people. And the language of each tribe was as different from each other as English is from Chinese.
Wow! thank you so much. I asked you to do a video about caucasian languages in the comments of your last video, I didn't expect you to even notice that among all the other requests, and answer it so quickly! thanks a lot NativeLang.
My father is a mountain Jew from Dagestan. When he was kid there, his parents' generation of the family spoke a dialect of Persian called Juhuri. It's cool you touched on this region.
Very interesting video! Great job! Wish you have talked more about languages of Dagestan :)
In Hindi, Door is called 'Duar' same as pronounced in Ossetian.
Sunita Gupta
Giorgi Razmadze Armenian is durr. The y means the.
Because Hindu comes from Sanskrit which is a Indo-European language.
that's because Hindi like all other Indo European languages derives from proto-Indo European that is thought to have formed in the Caucasus.
Latin word for King Rex,Rey,Regain,Reign,Roy,Royal and Germanic Rix,Ric and Rick are all related to Indo-Aryan words like Raj or Raja etc etc though PIE so not surprising.
I'd love to see your videos about Ainu and maybe some Siberian languages.
You’re in luck, three years later! He uploaded a video on the languages of Siberia last month and one on Ainu in April.
Your best video ever. I went to University in japan in the 80s But for the last 5 years I have been teaching (and i hope learning) in Turkey. This summer I begin a 2 year adventure studying in Georgia. This video got me all excited
Keep doing your content. One of the best channels on TH-cam right here.
I had a "normal" level of interest in language before starting to watch your things. You've made me a complete nerd. :)
I speak Adyghe (We call it "adigé bzé" in our language), it's a North West Caucasian language. Thank you for this video! ♥️🙏
@Beycan Han убыхский язык был ближе к абхазскому чем к кабардино-черкесскому
@@MegaRedada убыхи считали себя адыгами и говорили на адыгском языке. Всё убыхи сегодня считают себя адыгами и говорят на адыгском и не имеют отношения к абхазам.
You should do a video on the many languages of Papua New Guinea.
There are a bunch of resources on all sorts of Papuan languages, of many different families. A video on the core branches of Trans-NG shouldn't be hard at all. Comparing New Guinea to the Sentinel Islands is going way overboard.
+Ginni Hamadan And? It doesn't matter. NativLang will decide if he wants to do a video on the languages of New Guinea.
OH BOI i got into Papua recently and it was just... i hate the fact that
1. No one pays attention to them
2. The Wiki pages of most of them are super smol
Maybe all of new Guinea, not just the independent east
Interesting video (as always), though I have to agree somewhat with the other commenters complaining that it's a bit rambling.
Hey!!! Is 7:04 a citation of Aert H. Kuipers? That's my (parents') old neighbour. I do recall him telling about Caucasian languages once. Also about the difficulty posed by the roots not appearing to have any vowels, and the discussions he'd had about the existence of a (proto-) language with no vowels at all.
I'm _so_ glad his work is still relevant today!
He was such an amazing man; quite reclusive, yet very sociable. When asked, he could talk at length about the most diverse subjects -- mathematics, Japanese art, 19th century pianists, the many quirks of Slavic people (his wife, who lived in Canada, was Ukrainian by birth, and he himself taught Slavic languages at Leiden University). But his real passion was for languages.
Upon retiring, he first spent some 15 years finishing his English Salish dictionary, before finally getting to learn Mandarin; something he'd wanted to do ever since walking through Chinatown in New York when he was teaching there (somewhere in the 1950s, I think).
I first met him when he was already aged 74; a nephew had left him a computer, and he'd heard I knew a thing or two about them. (Back then, I used to help people with computer problems after school). I explained to him how to turn it on, start Windows, & told him of drives and disks. He appeared interested, so I mentioned in passing that QBasic could be used for programming. When I met him again a week later, he'd written his first piece of software! 74 years old!
He passed away a few years ago.
The very same! It's cool to read this personal background. It gives some depth to the person behind the simple name, date, idea citations I encountered while researching the video. Thank you for sharing.
Oh wow, 50 languages across 7 families....do you have any books or sources that you can suggest us for further exploration about languages? I would love to know more in details and actually with word comparisons. Thanks in advance and happy to be a fan of your channel!
Thanks a lot for a such great video! I was very much impressed, cause I just wanted you to make a video on the Dagestanian languages, but this one is even greater, than I could imagine!!
This is fascinating!
I would love to see a video all about vowel harmony. That stuff drove me nuts when I tried to learn Hungarian.
I saw Ainu pop up on that list there. would you pass find the time to bring attention to this language before it officially dies?
Why, so you can tell your friends "Ainu about it before it went extinct"?
Oh, I see what you did there...
Ket too!
Great work as always!
What do you think about the Altaic family hypothesis?
I'd love to eventually see a video about the similarities between Japonic, Koreanic, Mongolic, Turkic and Tungustic language families! That and something about Ainu!
Altaic... sounds like another epic video covering a lot of languages! I didn't realize how much of a difference it would make to include Ainu just once in the video, but, wow, I love to see so many requests for it!
Ainu is exciting as language isolates tend to be, Also the idea of a language using an adapted katakana as its sole script is super cool to me. Whatever you make though I'll be here to watch it, thanks for responding!
Altaic has been mostly dis-proven and these languages are probably a spachbund rather then related. And example would be how Turkic,Mongolic and Tungusic share vast amounts of vocabulary but it becomes less and less the more you go back in time which doesnt make sense if they were genetically related languages.
Some shared vocabulary-
Korean- Tangun(old Korean is Tanga)
Turkic-Tengri
Mongolic-Tenger
Tungusic Enduri
English- Deity/God
Korean- Han
Turkic-Khan/Han
Mongolic-Khan/han
Tungusic- Kan/Han
English- Master or tribal chief/ Minor King
The amount of nerd potential in this channel, I am such a big fan. Details matter, and you get it.
This is extremely fascinating and beautiful but so SO daunting. Languages are so complicated it’s wonderful but i’ll never get my head round them fully.
THANK YOU FOR MENTIONING CIRCASSIAN
Same
Awww... 🥰
Fascinating, entertaining, and enlightening, as always. Over time, I'd love to see you dive into each family, but most of all, I'd love to see a more in depth discussion on ergativity. Ever since I read about Diné Bizaad grammar, I have been intrigued, and wish to learn more. I think it would be well suited to your cartoons, and not too dry.
I'd be very pleased to see you make a video about the Albanian language, and how it descends from Illyrian dialects. Though I know it would be challenging, as there are not many examples of Illyrian literature surviving.
This was super. It was quick & to the point with many extra facts jammed in! I loved it
I've recently become interested in Abkhaz. The bit that caught my attention was the way in which it adapts both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. At times, it almost seems like it has more unique Abkhazian letters than letters from it's parent scripts!
its aqsua not abkhazian
the abkhaz cyrillic is wild
You should make a video about the Circassian language only, with it's unique sounds in it's different dialects and about how ancient it is, about the old alphabet, and about how the history was passed through laments when they had not time to write because of the life they lived that was full of wars and conflicts. Thanks for this awesome video, always great to hear these lovely languages of the Caucasus, thumbs up.
That's why in Switzerland we have so many dialects. The mountains, rivers and forests parted us.
Never thought of this🤔
@@arinaa4809 Me too, but then when I studied translation I learned about the isogloss which separates the dialects in a region. Back in time, people couldn't travel so far and some stayed in the same village their whole life. So they formed different dialects. :D
@@LearnGermanwithMarzipanfrau and that’s also why Swiss German is really different from German German? :)
@@arinaa4809 Yes, that's true. Germany is a lot flatter than Switzerland. So the dialects spread wider in flat regions than in regions with more mountains. :)
@@LearnGermanwithMarzipanfrau ight, thank you
Absolutely liking your videos! So interesting to watch and to hear. I must compliment you on your sweet sounding voice :] Greetings from Chechnya
Asalamoaleikum brother
I appreciate the attention given to Kurdish, a language and people who are often overlooked.
Not really
@@parsifal40 ok turk
@@roniNetewiKurdistan lol thats not a roast
From the book "How to Learn a Foreign Language" by Paul Pimsleur:
"Linguists tell us that no known language is composed of fewer sounds than Hawaiian, which has fifteen, or more than certain languages of the Caucasus, which have up to sixty. Most languages fall somewhere between these two extremes; English and French, for example, have thirty-one sounds."
Those mountains must be a pain in the ass for invaders. Notice how other isolated languiages, such as Basque and Albanian are spoken in mountainous terrain.
Both meant to be the oldest in Europe .
Ask russians. They like crossing mountains even if it’s other people’s territory. **wink** **wink**
they were in the past people used to hide in the mountain from invasions and if the enemy followed they would threw some big rocks at them
Labinot Tahiri Definitely not considering Albanian is Indo-European and must have split off from the proto-language
Random Person it took them a lot more. Those suckers have been putting their noses in all kinds of places for centuries and are now occupying 20% of Georgia. Let my country rest.
In Tsova-Tush, the sentence: ”As vuiž-n-as.” even *_SOUNDS_* phonetically more involved, than: ”So vož-en-so.” I’m guessing it has to do with the diphthong ”ui” in ”vuiž”, and the ”vowel-consonant” -syllable ”as”, as well as the two consonants, ”ž” and ”n” in a row; compared to the simple vowel ”o” in ”vož”, and the ”consonant-vowel” -syllable ”so”, as well as the vowel ”e” breaking the consonant cluster ”ž-n” -> ”ž-en”. The latter just phonetically sounds more passive and relaxed. It even has more harmonizing vowels: 3 * ”o” + ”e” vs. 2 * ”a” + ”u” + ”i”. IDK, I’m weird like that. 🤔
Ubykh is deserving of a video of it's own.
Thanks for mentioning us!Best wishes from Caucasus❤️
My wife grew up in Switzerland. She speaks Zuri-dootch. There is Basel-dootch, etc. The Swiss-speaking population can tell where a person is from down to a particular valley by accent. (Or could, as the differences are getting flattened out under immigration and mass communication.) Another interesting phenomena is with the advent of texting and blogging; Swiss, which was never a written language, is now getting transliterated by the populace, crowd-sourcing orthography.
You have forgot to notice, that we have in Georgia two other languages : Megrelian ( in the region- Samegrelo) and Svanuri (in the region- Svaneti) languages.
and lazuri(laz)
Thats because they're not languages but rather dialects. Like Cantonese or fuzhounese
@@kardzYT U are wrong. Search more about this issue please.
@@giorgishekiladze4282 except I'm not.
@epepepe and mandarin speakers cant understand cantonese or fujonese or shanghainese
I have ways been very interested in the Chechen language. Im thinking of learning it one day :)
It’s hard but great
I love this Channel
Quality > Quantity hurts,but is worth it
I would like to see a full video on the Turkic languages
big topic. Could include Dene, Haida, Navajo, Cree Indians of North America
*1:46*
English: Door;
Kurdish: Deri;
Ossetian: Duar;
Armenian: Dur;
Georgian: Kari -_-
In Georgia alone, the country under half the size of state with the same name, we have 4 totally distinct and different languages: Traditional Georgian, Megrelian, Svanuri/Swanian and Abkhazian (Abkhazia is Technically not a part of Georgia anymore it's independent now ;_;)
*3:32* Long ago, this was not theirs, but it was ours! Sochi -is- *_WAS_* A Georgian city *T_T.*
for fucks sake, georgians have nothing to do in circassian lands
i'm a circassian and what you said was true !!
as much as i know that the modern circassian language is a mix between Ubykh and abazian lang,
due to our traditions we removed the whole gender barrier which left us without he and she !
the circassian flag contains 12 stars, 1 star for each tribe, but that doesn't mean that you 12 accents, only 4 were used and the were very similar to each other.
the circassians are the Adigas btw, there's no difference or what so ever,
kabardins are just a tribe, the new historians divided us and made some new names.
surprisingly, after the Russo - circassian war ended back in 1864, many circassians were deported to the turkey, and the ottoman empire gov relocated the circassians over the middle east, like Jordan, Syria and israel !!
I dunno, Adygea and Kabardina are kind of unintelligible in their pronunciations, though there are some similarities.
I. Am. Obsessed. With. Circassians.
İn Azerbaijan u can find also these languages 🇦🇿: Lezgian,Hebrew,Talysh,Tat, Avar
Oh, thanks for mentioning Lezgian.)
Hebrew yoxdu Azərbaycanda. Buradakı Yahudiler tat(juhuri lehçesi) ve rus dillərində danışırlar. Tat dilində dağ yəhudiləri, rus dilində de Avropa Yahudileri danışır.
@Baxışoff avar eşitməmişəm amma dağ (qorski) yahudiləri hamısı tatca danışır, öz ləhcələri var tat dilidən cuhuri deyirlər. TH-camda mahnıları da çoxdur, elə digər tatlar da rahat başa düşürlər ləhclərini. Evropeyski yahudilər də rus dilində danışırlar. Amma avar dilində danışmağı ilk dəfədir sizdən eşidirəm.
@Jake Awake there is not Kurd in Azerbaijan
All of them are less then 5% of population in Azerbaijan. 95% are Azerbaijanin Turks
Hello From Georgia (საქართველო) In Kartvelian Language there are also 3 groups: Svan, Megrelian and Laz (Megrelian and Laz had common language in Acnient times). not talking about dialects:D
So the Caucasus is the Papua of the Near East, and like Papua is straddles the line between two continents. A fascinating place indeed, I have a friend who's half Georgian and from what he's told me about his mother's homeland it seems like a cultural oddity in many ways, its language being one of them.
I am Armenian on my Fathers side & Georgian on my Mothers
Inb many ways we are very similar, but also very different
One thing for sure Armenians & Georgians are the backbone of Christianity in the region for almost 2000 years
Such a beautiful video, man. I never realized the extent of the range of languages there. You should make a video of you actually going there and collect samples of speech from those regions, analyze, and with a linguist who specializes in those languages, come and talk about it with us! Subscribed!
randomly mentioned a kurdish saying made my heart melt
this guy really has found the passion of his life
OMG please do Ainu. I REALLY hope it was included in there as some sort of weird hint. Oh, my god, there's so much to talk about there and it's just so cool! I've got Ainu dictionaries I'd love people to just see how cool of a language and culture it is in one of your videos.
Yessss
I was hoping you'd explain Ergativity more. Is that a future one or have you already made it?
Only brief jabs (the Mesoamerica Sprachbund vid for example) and an old series on alignment (more of a linguistics 101 lecture, and one with errors). I had a long paragraph here in my notes, but I cut it to keep the story moving. I need to find a way to make ergativity entertaining...
Well, maybe the existence of ergativity in Basque and this being a point for the theory that relates Basque and Aquitanian to some languages of the Caucasus area could be of some interest.
There's no reason to postulate that the existence of ergativity in Basque and Caucasian languages would be evidence of a genetic relationship. Languages all over the world are Erg-Abs, including many Indo-Aryan languages, which we know for sure aren't related to Basque or Caucasian languages.
HobomanCat1 It's been regarded as one main piece of evidence for some experts though. I would not align to that theory as in my opinion it's been widely discredited, but the theory exists and has its supporters.
No credible linguists today would subscribe to Sino-Dene-Caucasian or whatever it's called. The comparative method only really works until around 10,000 years back, so a link between the languages would be so far back in time that there wouldn't be any evidence today.
Could you do a video on Guarani?
Nde Paraguayo, piko?
Acho que um vídeo sobre a família tupi, na pegada desse de Caucasus seria uma boa tbm
Probably you asked if I'm from Paraguayo)) No, I;m from Ukraine but your language is extrmely captivating and there's no good content on the Internet on this topic)
As far as I know, "piko" means friend?)
Oh, thought you were Brazilian, sorry. I wrote in my first comment that It'd be very interesting a video in where he explores the whole tupi-guarani family tree, like he did in this one with the caucasian languages.
In the small space where Azerbaijan meets the Caucus mountains in the north there a place called the red hills or the red mountains in Russian and Azeris call it Kuba. It’s a small village where Gorsky Jews lived (and still do) and they speak, you guessed it, gorsky.
Great video! Your content is always informative and enjoyable to watch! If you ever plan on making a video about the Armenian language, I would be more than happy to help.
I agree, I also want a video about the Armenian language.
i am caucasian turk (kumyk) from daghestan Salam to all Turks
Salam qardaw.
selamlarr
@WHATS VIRAL?
I think you are right
They are decentdent of gok
And magok
@Vahe Akopian Yes there is. Karachay, Balkar, Nogay, Kumyk are Turkic Caucasians. Eat shit you ignorant turd.
Aleykimi salam Kardaşım bende Ahıskalı Türküm
In Georgia there are another three languages: Svan, Megrelian and laz languages.
Which are old Georgia speakins languages ♥️
Is Megrelian the language spoken in Mekrilistan (mentioned in Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatname)?
@@fatihsaidduran ?
@@giorgijioshvili9713 "Mekrilistan" was a country mentioned in a travel journal/book "seyahatname" written by Evliya Çelebi. With a quick google search of Megrelian, I think Mekrilistan was the region Mingrelia.
@@fatihsaidduran no
mingrelian,svan and laz languages are in kartvelian group also :/ you don't mention them.
in English this is Mingrelian.
Mingrelian is wrong. it's not English, Russians are saying like that. It is Megrelian (Megruli/Margaluri) that's how it is native language. "მინგრელია"ზე ყლეობა ჯერ არაფერი მსმენია რუსების დამახინჯებულია.
Thank you so much, it´s a useful, introductory video for us to share so as to educate people about the cultural aspects of the region!
Assalamu alaikum! I am Ingush and I really enjoyed your video! Very enlightening!
Could you also do some explanation about languages of Southern China like Yunnan and Sichuan? 🙏
I love this video and it's interesting!
Sino-Kaukaz lanqvic union!
im so interested in kalmyks now. thank you for showing me a country i didnt know existed
You didn't know Russia exists? What?
Which people havent been destroyed by russia? Tell me.
Just discovered this channel and I am already in love with it
I find it odd that white, Jewish and Arab Americans have to list themselves as Caucasian on the census, when in fact only the Jews and a handful of eastern Europeans even remotely qualify. I am only 1% Caucasian. Yet my bloodline is almost completely European. How does that work?
uhh
Caucasian in the US pretty much means white
Google "Caucasoid race" or simply Caucasian race. It's all in the skull shape which determines race (Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid). Caucasian doesn't necessarily mean european white. Most people do not know this though. However, this is somewhat deemed controversial, despite the research behind it. Also, Europeans are Caucasian.
Finns were once considered mongoloid. Just don't go telling Stormfronters that Finns are mongols. xD
That is because of some archaic 18th or 19th century bullshit they thought all white skinned round eyed people originated from that region.
There is at least one far right nationalist group that insists that the Finns and the Japanese are the same race.
I really enjoyed this video. You’re really able to explain this clearly. I do read a lot of books concerning languages out of interest, but most of the time, I read a paragraph twice because I’m not able to comprehend it at first.
Due to my fascination with phonetics, I especially found your information about Ubykh helpful. How interesting that they only have the open central unrounded vowel and the schwa!
I’m from Iraq and my fathers ancestors are Dagestani. They lived in northern Iraq in the city of Mosul. I don’t know which particular ethnicity he is from though.
Tolstoi began his war experience at Sevastopol during the Crimean War. He wrote a novel about it. Also Lermontov wrote "Hero of our Time" which features fighting against the Chechens. Nothing changes.
Thank you! You never let us down xxx LOVE this channel
1:16 this would be a perfect creepy-pasta, some haunted mountain range that changes your language.
Dude, what the heck?! No cute and innocent little mountain can stop me from speaking Eastern Armenian!!
The Caucasus Mountains are haunted?! They’re harmless and cute mountains, it’s as if Mount St. Helens was about to blow up.
Can you please do a video about the 4 dialects of Wenzhou, China. It has been called a 'living fossil,' very remnant of ancient archaic Chinese, and also the devil's tongue as it's hard for Chinese speakers to understand or pronounce. It's so hard to understand that it was the language for relaying messages in secret like Najavo during WWII. Thank you for your amazing videos. Keep it up. :)