Ingush language


Ingush is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by about 500,000 people, known as the Ingush, across a region covering the Russian republics of Ingushetia and Chechnya.

Classification

Ingush and Chechen, together with Bats, constitute the Nakh branch of the Northeast Caucasian language family. There is pervasive passive bilingualism between Ingush and Chechen.

Geographic distribution

Ingush is spoken by about 413,000 people, primarily across a region in the Caucasus covering parts of Russia, primarily Ingushetia and Chechnya. Speakers can also be found in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Belgium, Norway, Turkey and Jordan.

Official status

Ingush is, alongside Russian, an official language of Ingushetia, a federal subject of Russia.

Writing system

Ingush became a written language with an Arabic-based writing system at the beginning of the 20th century. After the October Revolution it first used a Latin alphabet, which was later replaced by Cyrillic.

Phonology

Vowels

FrontCentralBack
Highи у
Midэ ? о
Lowаь а

The diphthongs are иэ /ie/, уо /uo/, оа, ий /ij/, эи /ei/, ои /oi/, уи /ui/, ов /ow/, ув /uw/.

Consonants

The consonants of Ingush are as follows, including the Latin orthography developed by Johanna Nichols:

Dialects

Ingush is not divided into dialects with the exception of Galain-Ch'azh, which is considered to be transitional between Chechen and Ingush.

Grammar

Ingush is a nominative–accusative language in its syntax, though it has ergative morphology.

Case

The most recent and in-depth analysis of the language shows eight cases: nominative, ergative, genitive, dative, allative, instrumental, lative, and comparative.
CasesSingularPlural
Nominative-⌀-azh / -ii, -i3
Ergative-uo / -z, -aa1-asha / –azh
Genitive-a, -n2-ii, -i
Dative-na, aa2-azh-ta
Allative-ga-azh-ka
Instrumental-ca-azh-ca
Lative-gh-egh
Comparative-l-el

  1. -uo is the only productive form. -z appears with personal names, kin terms, and other nouns referring to humans. -aa occurs with some declensions and is increasingly productive in colloquial use.
  2. Allomorph after vowels
  3. The choice of -azh vs. -ii is lexically determined for the nominative, but other cases are predictable.

    Tenses[Zev Handel], ''Ingush inflectional verb morphology: a synchronic classification and historical analysis with comparison to Chechen'' http://faculty.washington.edu/zhandel/Handel_Ingush.pdf.

Numerals

Like many Northeast Caucasian languages, Ingush uses a vigesimal system, where numbers lower than twenty are counted as in a base-ten system, but higher decads are base-twenty.
OrthographyPhoneticValueComposition
cwa1
shi2
qo3
d.i'14
pxi5
jaalx6
vorh7
baarh8
iis9
itt10
cwaitt111+10
shiitt122+10
qoitt133+10
d.iitt1144+10
pxiitt155+10
jalxett166+10
vuriit177+10
bareitt188+10
tq'iesta19
tq'o20-
tq'ea itt3020+10
shouztq'a402×20
shouztq'aj itt502×20+10
bwea100
shi bwea2002×100
ezar1000loan from Persian

  1. Note that "four" and its derivatives begin with noun-class marker. d- is merely the default value.

    Pronouns

Word order

In Ingush, "for main clauses, other than episode-initial and other all-new ones, verb-second order is most common. The verb, or the finite part of a compound verb or analytic tense form, follows the first word or phrase in the clause".