Лезги чIал / Lezgi ch'al / Lezgi language

Languages
#1

Салам виридаз / Salam viridaz / Hello all!

This thread is intended to serve as supplement to my 3-part presentation on Lezgi, a language spoken in Caucasus Mountains. I will be posting here additional information, clarifications (or even corrections, if need be) to the parts that need further explaining (I’m really not that good at talking to camera, I fear), as well as links to Lezgi resources I’ve gathered (the ones I mention in the talk and many more).

Most likely I won’t be terribly active here before the conference starts, but I’ll try to post the most important bits (resource list + links to text versions of the presentation) by Friday evening (Oct 16).

I’m thinking of opening a separate thread for Lezgi language practice / lessons during the conference (if there’s any interest).

Сагърай / Saghraj / Thanks and bye

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Piotr Kozłowski - intro
#2

Incredibile conoscere le lingue finora sconosciuto a me. La regione del caucaso è di una straordinaria pluralità di lingue.

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#3

Looking forwards to your talk! I’m a student of Armenian/Georgian and know Russian, so I’m pretty interested to learn more about Lezgi!

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#4

I will be missing the conference’s launch (20:00 London is just the time I fall asleep) but here, as promised, is the first part of resource list (intended as starting point for explorations):

Traditional media:

Lezgi-language press has 100-year old traditions, for modern periodicals see Лезги Газет Lezgi Gazet (https://lezgigazet.ru/), Самур Samur (http://samurpress.net/) and literary journal Алам Alam (https://www.alamjurnal.com/)

Books:

Hundreds of books have been published in Lezgi including fiction, poetry and school textbooks, but also some works on linguistics and specialized dictionaries. There are several online libraries, of which LezgiChal (https://www.lezgichal.ru/) is perhaps the most comprehensive.

Dictionaries and apps:

There are several dictionaries (Lezgi-Russian, Lezgi-Azerbaijani and Lezgi-English, the latter the least comprehensive) available online (https://gaf.lezgichal.ru/) and as Android apps (Gaf and PublicDictionary – same developer has published dics for several other Dagestanian languages)

Social media:

Lezgi content is easily available on all major networks (just make sure you search for both “Lezgi” and “Лезги”). A small sample from my bookmarks of language-learning focused channels/pages:

FB - https://www.facebook.com/lezqichal https://www.facebook.com/Lezgisadval/

TG – https://t.me/learning_lezgi

VK - https://vk.com/learning_lezgi https://vk.com/lezgi.chal

YT – Лезгинский язык Jeyhun Amirkhanov Лезгинский язык2 Lezgi Kids

Lezgi Wikipedia counts 4129 articles at the moment and is actually very useful as repository of short texts to read / tool to expand vocab

Individual projects:

Some of their efforts short-lived, some long-lasting but there is a lot of people trying to ‘do something’ with various results.
The personal web-page of Sedaget Kerimova, poetess, editor-in-chief of “Samur” and prominent language activist can serve as an example of focused, persistent works. An attempt to create Lezgi-language news broadcast didn’t survive, but is useful for learners. Lastly, this channel explaining social media and mobile technology in Lezgi is a new, promising initiative.

There is a lot that I’m afraid I’ve missed, I will try to gradually add stuff as I recall it or find it.

Чан сагърай! / Chan saghraj / Thanks a lot

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#6

Here are the links to .pdf versions of the three parts of my presentation:

Intro to Lezgi - part 1 - history & background
Intro to Lezgi - part 2 - language structure
Intro to Lezgi - part 3 - language activism

They are more expanded (and much more coherent) compared to the talk as delivered. You might be better off just reading them and skipping the presentation altogether :slight_smile:

… just kidding! See you during the conference!

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#7

Not strictly about language: a very interesting online exhibition “From Kyurins to Lezgins” created as a part of a large project “Land of Diversity”.

Very informative + lots of archival pictures. I wish I had known about it when making my presentation.

Enjoy!