Ingush language
Ingush is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by about 350,000 people, known as the Ingush, across a region covering the Russian republics of Ingushetia, Chechnya, North Ossetia, as well as the countries of Turkey, Kazakhstan, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and others.
Classification
Ingush and Chechen, together with Bats, constitute the Nakh branch of the Northeast Caucasian language family. There is pervasive passive bilingualism between Ingush and Chechen.Dialects
Ingush is not divided into dialects with the exception of, which is considered to be transitional between Chechen and Ingush.Geographic distribution
Ingush is spoken by about 350,000-400,000 people in Russia, primarily in the North Caucasian republics of Ingushetia, North Ossetia and Chechnya. Speakers can also be found in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Belgium, Norway, Turkey and Jordan.Official status
Ingush is, alongside Russian, an official language of Ingushetia, a federal subject of Russia.Phonology
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
| High | и/i | varies | у/u |
| Mid | э/e | varies | о/o |
| Low | аь/ea | а/a |
The diphthongs are иэ /ie/, уо /uo/, оа, ий /ij/, эи /ei/, ои /oi/, уи /ui/, ов /ow/, ув /uw/.
Consonants
The consonants of Ingush are as follows, including the Latin orthography developed by Johanna Nichols:Single consonants can be geminated by various morphophonemic processes.
Writing system
It is possible that during the period of the 8–12th centuries, when churches like Tkhaba-Yerdy emerged in Ingushetia, a writing system based on a Georgian script emerged. This is attested by the fact that a non-Georgian name, 'Enola', was found written on the arc of Tkhaba-Yerdy. Furthermore, Georgian text was found on archaeological items in Ingushetia that could not be deciphered.Ingush became a written language with an Arabic-based writing system at the beginning of the 20th century.
| Arabic letters | څ | چ | ژ | ڥ | ڢ | ڨ | ڭ | ڮ | |
| Cyrillic equivalents | ч | чI | цI | ц | пI | п | кх | кI | г |
After the October Revolution it first used a Latin alphabet, which was later replaced by Cyrillic.
Grammar
Ingush is a nominative–accusative language in its syntax, though it has ergative morphology.Case
The most recent and in-depth analysis of the language shows eight cases: absolutive, ergative, genitive, dative, allative, instrumental, lative and comparative.| Cases | Singular | Plural |
| Absolutive | -⌀ | -azh / -ii, -i |
| Ergative | -uo / -z, -aa | –azh |
| Genitive | -a, -n | -ii, -i |
| Dative | -aa, -na | -azh-ta |
| Allative | -ga | -azh-ka |
| Instrumental | -ca | -azh-ca |
| Lative | -gh | -egh |
| Comparative | -l | -el |
Numerals
Like many Northeast Caucasian languages, Ingush uses a vigesimal system, where numbers lower than twenty are counted as in a base-ten system, but higher decads are base-twenty.| Orthography | Phonetic | Value | Composition |
| cwa | 1 | ||
| shi | 2 | ||
| qo | 3 | ||
| d.i'1 | 4 | ||
| pxi | 5 | ||
| jaalx | 6 | ||
| vorh | 7 | ||
| baarh | 8 | ||
| iis | 9 | ||
| itt | 10 | ||
| cwaitt | 11 | 1+10 | |
| shiitt | 12 | 2+10 | |
| qoitt | 13 | 3+10 | |
| d.iitt1 | 14 | 4+10 | |
| pxiitt | 15 | 5+10 | |
| jalxett | 16 | 6+10 | |
| vuriit | 17 | 7+10 | |
| bareitt | 18 | 8+10 | |
| tq'iesta | 19 | ||
| tq'o | 20 | ||
| tq'ea itt | 30 | 20+10 | |
| shouztq'a | 40 | 2×20 | |
| shouztq'aj itt | 50 | 2×20+10 | |
| bwea | 100 | ||
| shi bwea | 200 | 2×100 | |
| ezar | 1000 | loan from Persian |
- Note that "four" and its derivatives begin with noun-class marker. d- is merely the default value.