Kumyk
къумукъ тил qumuq til • قموق تیل
Kumyk written in Cyrillic script, along with obsolete Latin and Perso-Arabic counterparts.
Native to	North Caucasus
Region	Dagestan, Chechnya, North Ossetia
Ethnicity	Kumyks
Native speakers	450,000 (2010 census)[1]
Language family	Turkic Common Turkic Kypchak Kypchak–Cuman Kumyk
Writing system	Cyrillic, Latin, Arabic
Official status
Official language in	Dagestan (Russia)
Language codes
ISO 639-2	kum
ISO 639-3	kum
Glottolog	kumy1244
Share of the Kumyk population in areas of traditional residence in the Caucasus according to the 2010 census
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External videos
A series of videos about the similarities of languages
Comparison of Kumyk and Tatar languages

Kumyk (къумукъ тил,^[2] qumuq til,^[3] قموق تیل^[4][5]) is a Turkic language spoken by about 426,212 people, mainly by the Kumyks, in the Dagestan, North Ossetia and Chechen republics of the Russian Federation.^[6] Until the 20th century Kumyk was the lingua-franca of the Northern Caucasus.

Classification

Kumyk language belongs to the Kipchak-Cuman subfamily of the Kipchak family of the Turkic languages. It's a descendant of the Cuman language, with likely influence from the Khazar language,^[7] and in addition contains words from the Bulghar and Oghuz substratum.^[7] The closest languages to Kumyk are Karachay-Balkar, Crimean Tatar, and Karaim languages.^[8]

Nikolay Baskakov, based on a 12th-century scripture named Codex Cumanicus, included modern Kumyk, Karachai-Balkar, Crimean Tatar, Karaim, and the language of Mamluk Kipchaks in the linguistic family of the Cuman-Kipchak language. Samoylovich also considered Cuman-Kipchak close to Kumyk and Karachai-Balkar.^[9]

Amongst the dialects of the Kumyk there are Kaitag, Terek (Güçük-yurt and Braguny), Buynaksk (Temir-Khan-Shura) and Xasavyurt. The latter two became basis for the literary language.^[10]

History

Kumyk had been a lingua-franca of the bigger part of the Northern Caucasus, from Dagestan to Kabarda, until the 1930s^[11][12][13] and was an official language of communication between the North-Eastern Caucasian nations and the Russian administration.^[14]

In 1848, a professor of the "Caucasian Tatar" (Kumyk) Timofey Makarov published the first ever grammatical book in Russian language for one of the Northern Caucasian languages, which was international Kumyk. Makarov wrote:^[15]

From the peoples speaking Tatar language I liked the most Kumyks, as for their language's distinction and precision, so for their closeness to the European civilization, but most importantly, I take in account that they live on the Left Flank of the Caucasian Front, where we're conducting military actions, and where all the peoples, apart from their own language, speak also Kumyk.

More than 90% of the Kumyks, according to 2010 census, also speak Russian, and those in Turkey and the Levant speak Turkish and Arabic.^{[citation needed]}

Phonology

Orthography

Kumyk has been used as a literary language in Dagestan and Caucasus for some time.^[when?] During the 20th century the writing system of the language was changed twice: in 1929, the traditional Arabic script (called ajam) was first replaced by a Latin script, which was then replaced in 1938 by a Cyrillic script.

Latin based alphabet (1927–1937)

Cyrillic based alphabet (since 1937)

Comparison Chart

Compiled from:^[17][18]