Bats language
| Bats | |
|---|---|
| batsba motjiti | |
| Native to | Georgia |
| Region | Zemo-Alvani in Kakheti |
|
Native speakers
|
3,400 (2000) far fewer than 3,000 active (2007) |
|
Northeast Caucasian
|
|
| Georgian script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | bats1242 |
Bats (also Batsi, Batsbi, Batsb, Batsaw, Tsova-Tush) is the language of the Bats people, a Caucasian minority group, and is part of the Nakh family of Caucasian languages. It had 2,500 to 3,000 speakers in 1975.
There is only one dialect. It exists only as a spoken language, as the Bats people use Georgian as their written language. The language is not mutually intelligible with either Chechen or Ingush, the other two members of the Nakh family.
Until the middle of the 19th century, the Tsovians lived in Tushetia, the mountain region of Northeast Georgia. They were expected to have come settled with Tush people in mid centuries later became assimilated with other Tush people and now are known as one of four tush subgroups. The Tsova Gorge in Tushetia was inhabited by four Bats communities: the Sagirta, Otelta, Mozarta and Indurta. Later they settled on the Kakhetia Plain, in the village of Zemo-Alvani, where they still live. Administratively they are part of the Akhmeta district of Georgia.
Bats belongs to the Nakh family of Northeast Caucasian languages.
Most speakers of Bats live in the village of Zemo-Alvani, on the Kakhetia Plain, in the Akhmeta district of Georgia. There are some families of Bats in Tbilisi and other bigger towns in Georgia.
Bats has a typical triangular five-vowel system with short–long contrast (except for u, which has no long form). Bats also has a number of diphthongs, ei, ui, oi, ai, ou, and au. All vowels and diphthongs have nasalized allophones that are the result of phonetic and morphophonemic processes; this is represented by a superscript n, as in kʼnateⁿ boy-GEN.
Bats has a relatively typical consonant inventory for a Northeast Caucasian language. Unlike its close relatives, Chechen and Ingush, Bats has retained the lateral fricative /ɬ/.
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Wikipedia