This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (April 2014) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the German article. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary Content in this edit is translated from the existing German popflock.com resource article at [[:de:Darginische Sprache]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|de|Darginische Sprache}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see popflock.com Resource: Translation.

Dargwa
dargan mez
Native to	Russia
Region	Dagestan
Ethnicity	590,000 Dargins (2010 census)[1]
Native speakers	490,000 (2010 census)[1]
Language family	Northeast Caucasian Dargin Dargwa
Official status
Official language in	Dagestan
Language codes
	dar
	dar (also Dargin languages)
Glottolog	darg1241 sout3261

Dargwa ( , dargan mez) is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by the Dargin people in the Russian republic Dagestan. It is the literary and main dialect of the dialect continuum constituting the Dargin languages.^[2] The four other languages in this dialect continuum (Kajtak, Kubachi, Itsari, and Chirag) are often considered variants of Dargwa. Korjakov (2012) concludes that Southwestern Dargwa is closer to Kajtak than it is to North-Central Dargwa.^[3]

Dargwa uses a Cyrillic script.

According to the 2002 Census, there are 429,347 speakers of Dargwa proper in Dagestan, 7,188 in neighbouring Kalmykia, 1,620 in Khanty-Mansi AO, 680 in Chechnya, and hundreds more in other parts of Russia. Figures for the Lakh dialect spoken in central Dagestan^[4] are 142,523 in Dagestan, 1,504 in Kabardino-Balkaria, 708 in Khanty-Mansi.^{[verification needed]}

Phonology

Consonants

• Phonemes in gold are present in the literary standard dialect of Dargwa but absent in some other dialect(s).
• Phonemes in pink are present in some dialect(s) of Dargwa but absent in the literary standard dialect.
• The source is rather ambiguous in its using the term "laryngeal" for a presumed column of consonants that includes both a "voiced" and a "glottalized" plosive. A voiced glottal plosive cannot be made, because the glottis needs to be closed, and an ejective consonant requires an additional closure further up the vocal tract. Pending clarification, this row has been transcribed here as an epiglottal column and a glottal stop, both found in many other East Caucasian languages.

Vowels

The Dargwa language features five vowel sounds /i, e, ?, a, u/. Vowels /i, u, a/ can be pharyngealized as /i?, u?, a?/. There may also be a pharyngealized mid-back vowel [o?] as a realization of /u?/, occurring in the Megeb dialect.^[5]

Orthography

The current Dargwa alphabet is based on Cyrillic as follows:

Grammar

Verb

TAM

Assertive (finite) forms

References

External links

• An online dictionary of Sanzhi Dargwa (in Dictionaria), by Diana Forker
• Appendix:Cyrillic script
• Dargin language (in Russian)
• Consonant Systems of the North-East Caucasian Languages
• Dargwa basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database