Avar Alphabet

Avar (магӀарул мацӀ, maʿarul maci) has been written in Cyrillic since 1938. Its alphabet has 33 Cyrillic letters, from А а to Я я, and the palochka Ӏ. Many of its consonants are written as digraphs formed by a base letter followed by ъ, ь or Ӏ. In dictionaries each digraph counts as a letter of its own and sorts right after its base letter: Гъ, Гь and ГӀ after Г; Къ, Кь, КӀ after К; Лъ and ЛӀ after Л; Хъ, Хь and ХӀ after Х.

Doubled spellings such as кк, хх, цц, кӀкӀ and чӀчӀ are used in Avar writing for strong, long consonants that contrast with single ones. A few letters, notably Ё ё and Ф ф, occur mostly in Russian loanwords; Щ щ also appears in native Avar words such as щиб.

Avar has early Georgian-script inscriptions and a long Ajam tradition; Latin was used from 1928 to 1938, and the current Cyrillic standard dates to 1938. The Cyrillic one is the standard today in schools, newspapers, books and on signs across Avar-speaking Dagestan.

What the Avar digraphs ГӀ, ХӀ, КӀ and Лъ write

Avar is a Northeast Caucasian language, famous among linguists for its consonants, and the digraphs are how Cyrillic copes with them. ГӀ гӀ is a voiced pharyngeal sound, the one Arabic writes with ʿayn, and ХӀ хӀ is a voiceless pharyngeal fricative like Arabic ḥāʾ; you see both in ЦӀадаса ХӀамзат, the name of the Avar poet Hamzat Tsadasa. Гь гь is a plain h, and Гъ гъ a voiced sound made at the back of the mouth, near a French r, as in Дагъистан (Dagestan).

КӀ, ТӀ, ЦӀ and ЧӀ are ejectives: k, t, ts and ch said with a sharp pop from a closed throat. The everyday word хинкӀал (khinkal, Dagestan's dough pieces boiled in broth and eaten with meat and garlic sauce) has one, and so does мацӀ, tongue or language. Къ and Хъ are sounds made further back than k, at the uvula.

Лъ, ЛӀ and Кь write lateral consonants, made with air passing the sides of the tongue, relatives of the Welsh ll. Because a single letter can change the whole word, Avar text with a missing Ӏ or ъ is not just untidy but often a different word.

How to type the palochka Ӏ

The palochka (Russian палочка, little stick) is U+04C0 Ӏ; its small form ӏ is U+04CF. Most Avar print uses the tall Ӏ inside small words too (гӀадан, person), so if you need just one, copy Ӏ from this page. The same character serves Chechen, Ingush, Dargwa, Lezghian, Kabardian, Adyghe and other Caucasian languages.

The standard Russian keyboard has no palochka key, so many people type a Latin capital I, the digit 1 or the Ukrainian і instead. On screen it can look the same, but search, sorting and spell-check treat it as a different letter: a dictionary search for хинкIал with a Latin I will not find хинкӀал.

Windows: in Microsoft Word type 04C0 and press Alt + X; elsewhere copy it from here. Mac: add the Unicode Hex Input input source, hold Option and type 04C0. Linux: Ctrl + Shift + U, then 4c0 and Enter. HTML: Ӏ for Ӏ and ӏ for ӏ. On a phone, keep Ӏ in your keyboard's text shortcuts or copy it here. For the rest of the alphabet any Russian keyboard layout works.

Where Avar is spoken

Avar is the language of the Avars of Dagestan, the Russian republic on the Caspian Sea in the North Caucasus. CLDR estimates around 550,000 speakers; Russian census figures are higher. Most live in the highland west of Dagestan and in its capital Makhachkala, and Avar villages also lie across the border in northern Azerbaijan, around Zaqatala and Balakən. The Avars' own name, магӀарулал, is usually explained as highlanders.

Dagestan is one of the most multilingual places on Earth, with dozens of languages in a small mountain republic, and Avar is among its main written languages. In the high valleys it has long served as a common language for speakers of the smaller Andic and Tsezic languages, its closest relatives. Nearly all Avar speakers also speak Russian, and prices are written in rubles, ₽.

Avar's neighbours have their own collections: Dargwa and Lezghian, also Northeast Caucasian; Chechen and Ingush, its more distant Nakh cousins that use the palochka too; Kumyk, a Turkic language of Dagestan's lowlands; and Russian. The flag and emoji of the country are in the Russia collection 🇷🇺.