Learn Kabardian if you are planning to take a trip to south west Russia Kabardian is a Caucasian language. There are approximately 650,000 people who speak the language. The language is mainly spoken in south west Russia, where about 450,000 speakers can be found. A large number of speakers can also be found in Turkey. You can also find Kabardian speakers in the USA, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Other terms that are used to refer to the Kabardian language is upper Circassian or west Circassian. Kabardian is closely related to Abaza, Abkhaz, Ubykh and Adyghian languages. These are languages that belong to the Northwest Caucasian group. The language has different dialects. These are Mozdok, Kuban, Cherkes, Besneley and Karbadian dialects. The Turkish Broadcasting corporation runs a half hour program every week using Terek, which is a dialect of Karbadian.
Kabardian has been a written language since 1917. Kabardian was first written using an Arabian script. This transitioned to a Latin alphabet. The Roman alphabet was also used to write it. Currently the Cyrillic alphabet has been in use since 1936. The written language is derived from the Karbadin dialect. The language has very few vowels and a lot of consonants. This is a characteristic of most Caucasian languages. Some word combinations can be written with as many as four consonants following each other. The language has a complex verbal system.
Some linguists hold the belief that Kabardian is merely a dialect of a Circassian language or the Adyghe language. This is given the fact that Kabardian speakers refer to themselves as Adighabze, which is the Kabardian term that is used to refer to the Adyghe language. This led linguists to come up with the term eastern Circassian to refer to Karbadian and the term western Circassian to refer to the Adyghe language, so as to avoid this confusion between the two languages. There are also a lot of lexical and phonetical differences between the languages, which provides a basis for arguing that the two languages are indeed different. However, the degree to which the 2 languages are mutually intelligible has not been conclusively reached.
