Adyghe phonology

Consonants

1. Consonants that exist only in borrowed words.

• In the Black Sea coast dialects of Adyghe there exist a palatalized voiced velar stop, a palatalized voiceless velar stop and a palatalized velar ejective that were merged with, and in most Adyghe dialects. For example, the Shapsug words "гьанэ" "shirt", "кьэт" "chicken" and "кӏьапсэ" "rope" are pronounced in other dialects as "джанэ", "чэт" and кӏапсэ.
• The labialized retroflex consonants шъу and жъу in the literary Temirgoy dialect are alveolo-palatal щу and жьу in the Black Sea coast dialects of Adyghe.
• In the Black Sea coast dialects of Adyghe there exist an alveolar ejective fricative that correspond to in other Adyghe dialects. For example, the Shapsug words "сӏэ" "name" and "псӏы" "lie" are pronounced in other dialects as "цӏэ" and пцӏы.
• The phoneme written Л л is pronounced as a voiced alveolar lateral fricative mostly by the Circassians of Adygea, but many Circassians in diaspora pronounce it as an alveolar lateral approximant.
• In Adyghe, the palato-alveolar consonants ш, шӏ and шӏу may be affricated to ч, чӏ and чӏу after the consonant с or шъу. For example, the words:
• The first and second person prefixes с, т, п and шъу may become voiced з, д, б and жъу before the consonant гъ. For example:
• The phoneme found in the Adyghe dialects correspond to in Kabardian. For example:
• In many Adyghe dialects there exist that corresponds to standard Temirgoy . For example, the Temirgoy word цуакъэ is чъуакъэ in the other Adyghe dialects.
• All dialects possess a contrast between plain and labialized glottal stops. A very unusual minimal contrast, and possibly unique to the Abzakh dialect of Adyghe, is a three-way contrast between plain, labialized and palatalized glottal stops.
• The Black Sea dialect of Adyghe contains a very uncommon sound: a bidental fricative, which corresponds to the voiceless velar fricative found in other varieties of Adyghe.
• The Hakuchi dialect of Adyghe contains uvular ejective and a labialized uvular ejective , which corresponds to the and in other dialects.

  Vowels