Ubykh language

Ubykh
Ubykh
tuex̂ıbze; tʷɜxɨbzɜ
Pronunciation	/tʷɜxɨbzɜ/
Native to	Circassia
Region	Sochi
Ethnicity	Ubykh
Extinct	7 October 1992, with the death of Tevfik Esenç
Language family	Northwest Caucasian Ubykh;
Writing system	Unwritten, but provisional orthographies have been developed
Language codes
ISO 639-3	uby
Glottolog	ubyk1235
	Ubykh (extinct)
	Ubykh is an extinct language according to the classification system of the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
	This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Ubykh is an extinct Northwest Caucasian language once spoken by the Ubykh people, a subgroup of Circassians who originally inhabited the eastern coast of the Black Sea before being deported en masse to the Ottoman Empire in the Circassian genocide.^[2]

The Ubykh language was ergative and polysynthetic, with a high degree of agglutination, with polypersonal verbal agreement and a very large number of distinct consonants but only two phonemically distinct vowels. With around eighty consonants, it had one of the largest inventories of consonants in the world,^[3] and the largest number for any language without clicks.

The name Ubykh is derived from Убых (/wɨbɨx/), from Убыхыбзэ, its name in the Adyghe language. It is known in linguistic literature by many names: variants of Ubykh, such as Ubikh, Oubykh (French); and its Germanised variant Päkhy (from Ubykh /tʷɜχɨ/).

^ Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (Report) (3rd ed.). UNESCO. 2010. p. 31.
^ Koerner, E. F. K. (1 January 1998). First Person Singular III: Autobiographies by North American Scholars in the Language Sciences. John Benjamins Publishing. p. 33. ISBN 978-90-272-4576-2.
^ King, Charles (2008). The Ghost of Freedom. p. 15.

[1] Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (Report) (3rd ed.). UNESCO. 2010. p. 31.

[Koerner1998-2] Koerner, E. F. K. (1 January 1998). First Person Singular III: Autobiographies by North American Scholars in the Language Sciences. John Benjamins Publishing. p. 33. ISBN 978-90-272-4576-2.

[3] King, Charles (2008). The Ghost of Freedom. p. 15.

[1]

[2]

[3]

Ubykh
tuex̂ıbze tʷɜxɨbzɜ
Pronunciation	/tʷɜxɨbzɜ/
Native to	Circassia
Region	Sochi
Ethnicity	Ubykh
Extinct	7 October 1992, with the death of Tevfik Esenç
Language family	Northwest Caucasian Ubykh
Writing system	Unwritten, but provisional orthographies have been developed
Language codes
ISO 639-3	`uby`
Glottolog	`ubyk1235`
Ubykh (extinct)
Ubykh is an extinct language according to the classification system of the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger ^[1]
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.