Adyghe (Circassian): Abzakh Dialect

Abzakh: a brief note

Resources :

The Adopted Son
Turkey, Ankara, 1970, Catherine Paris

Source: Paris, Catherine. 1980. Le garçon adoptif. Bedi Kartlisa 38:198-232

This story, told by a native of Reyhaniye, in southern Turkey, was recorded by Catherine Paris in Ankara during the summer of 1970. It was transcribed in Paris with the help of Niaz Batouka (see below). The published transcription corresponds to the speech of Mr Batouka and differs from the recording in some respects. In preparing this document for the web, Dina Dabjen-Bailly has changed the published transcription to accord with the recording, reordering sentences 27-29 (the published sentence numbers from no. 26 to 35 are included here in square brackets), adding the words in parentheses in sentences 11 and 30, and inverting the first two words of sentence 34.

Word List
France, Paris, 1974, Catherine Paris

This list was prepared by Catherine Paris and Niaz Batouka, an Abzakh speaker from the Syrian village of Berike in the Golan Heights, to illustrate the phonology of the Abzakh dialect, and recorded by Mr Batouka.

Patsitse the Crow
Serbia, Kosovo, Stanovce, 1982, René Gsell

This story in the Abzakh dialect was told by Mr Isak Tsey, an engineer originally from the village of Stanovce in Kosovo, and was recorded in Pristina in 1982 by Prof. René Gsell. It was transcribed with the help of two Abzakh speakers under the direction of Catherine Paris in her seminar in 1983.

Gsell, René, Isak Tsey, Catherine Paris, Niaz Batouka, A. Tlich, Pierre Dréan, Marc-Yves Lautrou. 1984. Patsitse-le-corbeau, conte tcherkesse en dialecte abzakh. Bedi Kartlisa 62:253-292.

The transcription and French translation of the story were computerized and synchronized with the recording in 2003-2004 by Mme Dina Dabjen-Bailly, who added the Cyrillic version for the benefit of Adyghe speakers. Omissions in the published transcription have been corrected in sentences 66 and 67, and the order of words has been modified in sentence 72.

Transcription

Mme Paris (1987, Dictionnaire II, v.1, p. xi-xv) described her transcription as " partly phonetic and partly phonological, corresponding to the notation of G. Dumézil with minor modifications... "

See the phonological table

Source of the table: Paris, Catherine et Batouka, Niaz. 1987-1992. Dictionnaire Abzakh (tcherkesse occidental). II: Phrases et textes illustratifs. (in 3 volumes; the table appears in each of the three volumes.) Paris. Peeters. (The first part, the dictionary proper, ended in 2005)