Talk:Lezgian language

Lezgian vs. Lezghi
I haven't heard the term "Lezghi" in linguistics that often. It's referred to as "Lezgian" almost everywhere. And even Martin Haspelmath, who was with the people for quite some time and has written a really excellent grammar on their language calls it Lezgian. Why should "Lezgian" be wrong, when Belgian, Russian, Romanian, Bulgarian, etc. use the same suffix? — N-true 13:01, 17 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Most speakers of the Lezgian language do not know the convention of English-speaking linguists of using the term "Lezgian", with the suffix "-ian" as in "Norwegian", "Indonesian", etc. They therefore tend to use the form "Lezgi", which corresponds to the Lezgian form. As more and more Lezgian speakers use English (without knowledge of the scientific literature about their language), it is quite likely that the term "Lezgi" will eventually become more widespread, perhaps also among linguists. Note also that the form "Lezghi" is quite wrong: Either it tries to forestall a pronunciation "Lezji" in English (using the h in the Italian manner, as in Ghibellines), or it tries to exotocize the language name in a strange way. --Haspelmath 17:45, 4 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, okay, than I was a little mistaken, I guess. — N-true 19:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

But then, one might question why it is Lezgian, when all other Daghestani languages are pronounced Avar, Darghin, Lak, Kumyk, Rutul, Aghul and so on, while EuropEAN languages go as Belgian, Bulgarian etc. I am a Lezghi native speaker, so to me  "Lezghian" sounds "europeanized" and somewhat lost in translation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheQuester (talk • contribs) 05:20, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Lezgian language template
If you are a native speaker of Lezgian then you can help translate this template into your own language:

To the template

--Amazonien (talk) 22:19, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Lezgi Wikipedia
People may be pleased to know that there is now a Lezgi Wikipedia! ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:25, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

See the article List of Wikipedias. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 23:21, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Lezgian language. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100217175902/http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg=00206 to http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg=00206

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 09:26, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Cases
There is one statement that the language has 18 "grammatical cases", for which I have now added a reference from Haspelmath. Below this, the article states that there are four "grammatical cases" and fourteen "locative cases". I am not sure how the 14 cases cases are grouped as "locative", which is not a category Haspelmath uses.

What should be done to fix this? As a minimum, there should be a source for the claim for the second analysis. Then maybe it could be added "There are two slightly different analyses of grammatical case, one by Haspelmath, and one by..." Pete unseth (talk) 18:30, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Consonant inventory?
The consonant inventory given here is exactly the same as the one for the Chechen language. It seems to differ significantly from the inventory given in Haspelmath (1993). Is it possible that there is an error here and/or there?

Haspelmath (1993) A Grammar of Lezgian 71.12.5.137 (talk) 05:40, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 20:07, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Idioma lezgin.png

Lezgian vs. Lezgin
I'm puzzled that this article is at "Lezgian" but uses "Lezgin" in the text. I see that moved it from Lezgi language in 2007, citing what appears to be their own expert writings, and that at article creation in 2004 the opening read "Lezgi or Kuri is one of the most important languages in the Lezgian group", linking to an article now at Lezgic languages; that in 2012 the article opening began "Lezgian, also called Lezgi or Lezgin", and that  has removed the form "Lezgian" from the text here (diff) and at Lezgic languages as being incorrect; they note that they are a speaker of the language. It's possible that English-language usage is "Lezgian", as noted earlier on this page with respect to "Lezghi", but when I checked the references that appear after "Lezgin" in the current form of the article, I found that Bauer's book (which used to be cited after "Lezgian") just mentions Haspelmath's grammar, and Political Organization in Central Asia and Azerbaijan (the successor to a bare link in Azeri Google Books added by Aserbaidschaner in their edit) just refers to the language group. So it is possible that other English-language writers use "Lezgin" as the speakers of the language do. Are any linguists able to determine whether this is so, or whether the article text should go back to matching the title in preferring "Lezgian"? Yngvadottir (talk) 04:30, 20 September 2021 (UTC)


 * The thing is that the language is simply not referred to very much in English-language works. However, in academic linguistics, "Lezgian" is definitely the standard form for the language, and "Lezgic" for the family. Here is a quotation from the Oxford Handbook of the Languages of the Caucasus (edited by M. Öolinsky, 2020, p. 31-32): "The Lezgic languages, spoken in southeastern Dagestan and northern Azerbaijan, include Archi (aršatːen č’at; 1,500), Tabasaran (tabasaran č’al; 117,000), Agul (Aghul; aʁul č’al; 27,000), Lezgian (lezgi č’al; 546,000), Rutul (mɨχaʕbišdɨ č’ɛl; 27,300), Tsakhur (Tsaxur, Caxur; c’aˁχna / jɨˁqnɨ miz; 20,000, although this figure may be a strong overes- timate because of the massive shift of the Tsakhurs of Azerbaijan to Azerbaijani), Budukh (budanu mɛz; 200 speakers), Kryz (Jek, Alik, Kryts, Dzhek; ɢrɨc’ä mɛz; 4,400), and Udi (udin muz; 4,900, also in Georgia and among recent migrants to Russia). Udi is exceptional in that it is by far the earliest documented language of the family. It is a descendant or relative of the ancient Caucasian Albanian (Aghwan) language or of its sister (Gippert, Schulze, W., Aleksidze, A., & Mahé, 2008; see also section 1.3)." Haspelmath (talk) 21:05, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Vowel inventory
In the vowel inventory the unrounded mid central vowel (ə) is listed as appearing in the language but there's no mention in what way LegbelsoPont (talk) 17:41, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Lezgian is wrong, Lezgin is correct
Please change "Lezgian language" to the correct version "Lezgin language". Lezghian, Lezgian, Lesgian are incorrect variants of the word Lezgin. I can't do this myself, so I ask more experienced participants. Aserbaidschaner (talk) 08:47, 21 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I assume you are saying this because it most closely matches the name used by native speakers of the language. The problem is, most languages names in English are different from how native speakers of those languages refer to them. Some English names are merely transliterations of native ones, but many are not. I believe language articles here typically follow what is most commonly seen "in the literature" about the language (as published in English). For "small languages" we might just defer to a single well known language resource, like sil.org or Ethnologue. I'm not sure. In any case, in order to get this article moved to a different title, you'll probably have to demonstrate either that scholars writing in English most commonly use the name "Lezgin" or that a well known language resource uses the name. Merely arguing that it's not the name preferred by native speakers is almost certainly not going to be sufficient. - dcljr (talk) 11:23, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * We Lezgins call ourselves Lek(Лекъ). In Wiki are other Caucasian languages ​​for comparison, for example Chechen and Dargin, no one calls them Dargian/Darginian or Chechenian/Chechian. In all old sources we are mentioned as Lezgin, in some Lezgi. I assume that someone introduced Lezgian into use, and that’s how its use began. At sil.org our language is referred to as Lezgian, Lezghian, Lezgi and Lezgin. In encyclopedia.com, for example, our language is also referred to as Lezgin. In ethnologue.com as Lezgi. I’m just wondering why they chose Lezgian for Wikipedia? This option is the least common. Lek from Azerbaijan (talk) 10:03, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The only direct answer to your question I can give is: see the other sections on this talk page where this same issue has been discussed previously. (In particular, User:Haspelmath seems to be the person you need to be talking to.) But as a more general response, I would say: I'm a little confused by your comment. In your statements "We… call ourselves…" and "…we are mentioned as…", you seem to be talking about terms for people rather than terms for the language they speak. Only the latter kind of term (for languages) would be relevant here, since the same term is not always used for both things. Secondly, you say, "In all old sources we are mentioned as Lezgin, in some Lezgi." This seems contradictory. Do you mean some more recent sources use the term "Lezgi", unlike "all" the old ones? (And again, is that term referring to people or the language?) Finally — and perhaps most importantly — what "old sources" are you alluding to? Do you have any titles or authors? Any URLs you can link to? Because, like I said before, that's the only kind of evidence that is likely to get people to agree to the change you want to see. (And just for the record, according to Ethnologue, "Lezgin" is indeed a transliteration of the name of the language in the language itself [its "autonym"], лезги, as I suspected when I first commented here. The two-word autonym listed there corresponds to "Lezgin language".) - dcljr (talk) 02:48, 17 June 2024 (UTC)