Circassian

Circassian is the main branch of the Northwest Caucasian language family, native to Circassia on the north-eastern Black Sea coast and spoken by a people who call themselves Adyghe. It exists in two closely related, mutually intelligible literary standards, Adyghe or West Circassian and Kabardian or East Circassian. Like its relatives it is an ergative language with a large consonant inventory and an elaborate verbal system.

Circassian had no native orthography before the nineteenth century, and Ottoman Turkish served as its literary medium. From the 1820s scholars such as the Kabardian poet Nogma devised Arabic-based alphabets, and in 1830 Nogma and the Russian orientalist Gratsilevsky produced a Cyrillic version, opening the way to writing down the spoken tribal dialects.