On October 7, 1992, an elderly man named Tevfik Esenç died in Turkey, and with him - on that day - died the Ubykh language.
Once spoken by 50 000 people in the northwest Caucusus, Tevfik Esenç was the last remaining native speaker. 1/8
Once spoken by 50 000 people in the northwest Caucusus, Tevfik Esenç was the last remaining native speaker. 1/8
Ubykh belonged to the Adygean branch of the Northwest Caucasian language family. The Ubykh were a Muslim people, renowned for their fiercely independent character and courage in battle. 2/8
Until 1864, 40,000-50,000 Ubykh lived along the east shore of the Black Sea, near Sochi, north-west of Abkhazia. Following a failed revolt against Tsarist rule, essentially the entire population was expelled, and exiled to Turkey, where their language slowly withered away. 3/8
Forty years after the expulsion of the Ubykh, the man to be the last speaker of the language, Tevfik Esenç, was born in the village of Haci Osman in Turkey, where most Ubykh speakers found themselves after the 1864 expulsion. He was raised by his Ubykh-speaking grandparents. 4/8
Julius von Mészáros, a Hungarian linguist, visited Turkey in 1930 and took notes on Ubykh from native speakers. His work Die Päkhy-Sprache, published in 1934, was accurate to the extent allowed by his transcription system, and marked the foundation of Ubykh linguistics. 5/8
The Frenchman Georges Dumézil also visited Turkey in 1930 and would become the most celebrated Ubykh linguist. Working with Tevfik Esenç he published a collection of Ubykh folktales in the late 1950s, and in 1975 a comprehensive account of the morphology of the language. 6/8
Ubykh is a phonologically complex language with an extraordinary 84 consonants (a record, apart from the Khoisan languages of SA) & only 2 phonological vowels. Because of its immense difficulty there is no realistic prospect of the language being revived outside of academia. 7/8
Tevfik Esenç died in 1992 at the age of 88. On his tombstone of white marble is carved, according to his wishes:
"This is the grave of Tevfik Esenç. He was the last person able to speak the language they called Ubykh." 8/8
"This is the grave of Tevfik Esenç. He was the last person able to speak the language they called Ubykh." 8/8
This is Georges Dumézil’s pioneering collection of traditional Ubykh folktales, complied in conjunction with Tevfik Esenç: "Contes & légendes des Oubykhs", published by the Institut d’Ethnologie in Paris in 1957.
Again with substantial input from Tevfik Esenç, this is Georges Dumézil's "Documents anatoliens sur les langues et les traditions du caucase. Textes Oubykhs", published by Institut d'Ethnologie, Musée de l'Homme, coll. "Travaux et Mémoires de l'Institut d'Ethnologie", Paris 1962.
