Karachay-Balkar
| Karachay–Balkar | |
|---|---|
| Mountain Turkic | |
| къарачай-малкъар тил qaraçay-malqar til таулу тил tawlu til | |
| Native to | North Caucasus |
| Region | Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay–Cherkessia, Turkey |
| Ethnicity | Karachays, Balkars |
Native speakers | 310,000 in Russia (2010 census) |
Turkic
| |
| Dialects |
|
| Cyrillic Latin in diaspora Arabic historically | |
| Official status | |
Official language in | Kabardino-Balkaria (Russia) Karachay-Cherkessia (Russia) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | krc |
| ISO 639-3 | krc |
| Glottolog | kara1465 |
Map of Turkic-speaking groups in Kabardino-Balkaria | |
Karachay-Balkar is classified as Vulnerable by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger | |
Karachay–Balkar (къарачай-малкъар тил, qaraçay-malqar til), often referred to as the "mountaineer language" (таулу тил, tawlu til) by its speakers, 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 /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ and Malkar, which pronounces the corresponding phonemes as /ts/ and /z/. The modern Karachay–Balkar written language is based on the Karachay–Baksan–Chegem dialect. The language is closely related to Kumyk.