Bezhta language

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Bezhta
Kapucha
бежкьалас миц bežƛʼalas mic/beƶⱡʼalas mic
Pronunciation	[ˈbeʒt͡ɬʼɑlɑs mit͡s]
Native to	North Caucasus
Region	Southern Dagestan
Ethnicity	Bezhta people
Native speakers	6,800 (2006–2010)[1] 8,138 (2020 census)[2]
Language family	Northeast Caucasian Tsezic Bezhta–Hunzib–Khwarshi Bezhta
Dialects	Bezhta proper Tladal Khocharkhota Turk.Bezhta
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kap
Glottolog	bezh1248
ELP	Bezhta
Bezhta
Bezhta is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (2010)
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The Bezhta (or Bezheta) language (Bezhta: бежкьалас миц, bežƛʼalas mic, beƶⱡʼalas mic, pronounced [ˈbeʒt͡ɬʼɑlɑs mit͡s]), also known as Kapucha (from the name of a large village^[3]), belongs to the Tsezic group of the North Caucasian language family. It is spoken by about 6,200 people in southern Dagestan, Russia.^[1]

Its closest linguistic relatives are Hunzib and Khwarshi.^[4]

Bezhta can be divided into three dialects – Bezhta Proper, Tlyadal [ru] and Khocharkhota^[1] – which are spoken in various villages in the region.

Bezhta has a rich consonantal and – unlike its relatives Tsez and Avar – a relatively large vowel inventory (16 distinct vowel phonemes), compared to other languages of the same family.^[5]

Bezhta contrasts vowel length and nasalization.

Bezhta is unwritten, but various attempts have been made to develop an official orthography for the language. The Bezhta people use Avar as the literary language. The first book ever printed in Bezhta was the Gospel of Luke (1999).^[6] The orthography used in translations of biblical texts is as follows:^[7][8]

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (January 2010)

Bezhta is mostly agglutinative and the vast amount of locative cases makes its case system particularly rich. The verb morphology is relatively simple. It is an ergative language.^{[citation needed]}

Unlike Tsez, Bezhta has a decimal system with the word for twenty being an exception.^[9]

• Multiples of 10 higher than 20 are formed by adding the suffix -yig (-йиг) to the multiplier. Hence, the word for 30 is łanayig (лъанайиг).
• Compound numbers are formed by juxtaposition, the smaller numbers following the greater ones. The number 47 is thus expressed as ṏqʼönäyig aƛna (оьᵸкъоьнаьйиг алIна).

This is a passage taken from the Gospel of Luke^[10] written in a Cyrillic orthography based on Avar and Chechen, a Latinized transcription and one in IPA.

• Margus Kolga; Igor Tõnurist; Lembit Vaba; Jüri Viikberg (1993). "The Bezhtas". The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire.
• The Bezhta People and Language (P.J. Hillery)
• Bezhta Vocabulary List (from the World Loanword Database)
• Bezhta basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database