Karachay-Balkar

Karachay–Balkar (Къарачай-Малкъар тил, Qaraçay-Malqar til), or Mountain Turkic (Таулу тил, Tawlu til), is a Turkic language spoken by the Karachays and Balkars in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay–Cherkessia, European Russia, as well as by an immigrant population in Afyonkarahisar Province, Turkey. It is divided into two dialects: Karachay-Baksan-Chegem, which pronounces two phonemes as and  and Malkar, which pronounces the corresponding phonemes as  and. The modern Karachay–Balkar written language is based on the Karachay–Baksan–Chegem dialect. The language is closely related to Kumyk.

Writing
Historically, the Arabic alphabet had been used by first writers until 1924. Handwritten manuscripts of the Balkar poet Kazim Mechiev and other examples of literature have been preserved to this day. First printed books in Karachay–Balkar were published in the beginning of the 20th century.

After the October Revolution as part of a state campaign of Latinisation Karachay and Balkar educators developed a new alphabet based on Latin letters. In the 1930s, the official Soviet policy was revised and the process of Cyrillization of Soviet languages was started. In 1937–38 the new alphabet based on Cyrillic letters was officially adopted.

Alphabet
Modern Karachay–Balkar Cyrillic alphabet:


 * * Not found in native vocabulary

In Kabardino-Balkaria, they write ж instead of дж, while in Karachay-Cherkessia, they write нъ instead of нг. In some publications, especially during the Soviet period, the letter у́ or ў is used for the sound.

Karachay–Balkar Latin alphabet:

Phonology
Parentheses indicate allophones, brackets indicate phonemes from loanwords.

Language example
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Karachay–Balkar:

Loanwords
Loanwords from Russian, Ossetian, Kabardian, Arabic, and Persian are fairly numerous.

In popular culture
Russian filmmaker Andrei Proshkin used Karachay–Balkar for The Horde, believing that it might be the closest language to the original Kipchak language which was spoken during the Golden Horde.