In 2002, Lezgian was spoken by about 397,000 people in Russia, mainly Southern Dagestan, and in 1999 by 178,400 people in mainly the Qusar, Quba, Qabala, Oghuz, Ismailli and Khachmaz provinces of northeastern Azerbaijan. Lezgian is also spoken in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Germany and Uzbekistan by immigrants from Azerbaijan and Dagestan. There are also small populations in the Balikesir, Yalova, Izmir, Bursa regions in Turkey. The Lezgian people are concentrated mainly in Kirne village of the Balikesir region. The total number of speakers is about 800,000.
is very often rounded after labialized consonants, which may then lose their labialization.
is open in stressed syllables
if a vowel plus sequence is not followed by a vowel, the may be deleted and the vowel nasalized. Thus can be pronounced.
Consonants
There are 54 consonants in Lezgian. Characters to the right are the letters of the Lezgian Cyrillic Alphabet. Note that aspiration is not normally indicated in the orthography, despite the fact that it is phonemic.
Alphabets
Lezgian has been written in several different alphabets over the course of its history. These alphabets have been based on three scripts: Arabic, Latin, and Cyrillic. The Lezgian Cyrillic alphabet is as follows: The Latin alphabet was as follows:
Grammar
Lezgian is unusual for a Northeast Caucasian language in not having noun classes. Standard Lezgian grammar features 18 grammatical cases, produced by agglutinating suffixes, of which 12 are still used in spoken conversation.
Genitive case : marks possession. It is also used with the meaning 'of'. The genitive case precedes the noun that it modifies.
Dative case : usually marks the indirect object of sentences, that is the recipient of an action. It is also used to mark the subject of some verbs and to express a point of time and direction.
There are fourteen Locative cases:
* Adessive case : marks the object of some verbs to mean 'by', 'to', 'with'.
* Adelative case : expresses movement from somewhere. It is also used with the verb 'to be able' and to express an accidental action.
* Subessive case : means either 'below' or 'participates'.
* Subelative case : means either 'from below', 'from', ' against', 'with' or 'out of'. It is also used to mark Y in the construction 'X becomes out-of-Y' and can express the topic of a sentence or the cause of emotions.
* Subdirective case : expresses cause, and can mean 'because' or 'of' : means 'at', 'in' or 'during/whilst'.
* Superdirective case : means 'onto', 'until', 'in', as an instrumental case or instructive with abstract nouns.
Declension
There are two types of declensions.
First declension
Vocabulary
Numbers
The numbers of Lezgian are: Nouns following a number are always in the singular. Numbers precede the noun. "Сад" and "кьвед" lose their final "-д" before a noun. Lezgian numerals work in a similar fashion to the French ones, and are based on the vigesimal system in which "20", not "10", is the base number. "Twenty" in Lezgian is "къад", and higher numbers are formed by adding the suffix -ни to the word and putting the remaining number afterwards. This way 24 for instance is къанни кьуд, and 37 is къанни цӏерид. Numbers over 40 are formed similarly. 60 and 80 are treated likewise. For numbers over 100 just put a number of hundreds, then the word with a suffix, then the remaining number. 659 is thus ругуд вишни яхцӏурни цӏекӏуьд. The same procedure follows for 1000. 1989 is агьзурни кӏуьд вишни кьудкъанни кӏуьд in Lezgi.
