Language name and locationː Chirag, Dagestan Republic, Russia [Refer to Ethnologue]
语言名称和分布地区: 奇拉格语, 俄罗斯联邦达吉斯坦共和国

1. t͡sa  

21.  ʁa.nu.t͡sara

2. t͡ʃʼwal  

22.  ʁa.nu.t͡ʃʼura

3. ʕaˤbal

23.  ʁa.nu.ʕaˤbra 

4. aʁwal

24.  ʁa.nu.aʁwra

5. xujal  

25.  ʁa.nu.xura

6. rekːal

26.  ʁa.nu.rekːra

7. ʁwaˤral

27.  ʁa.nu.waˤra

8. kːaˤʕal

28.  ʁa.nu.kːaˤʕra

9. art͡ʃʼamal

29.  ʁa.nu.art͡ʃʼamra

10. wet͡sʼal

30.  ʕab.t͡sʼale

11. wet͡sʼ.nu.t͡sara

40.  aʁw.t͡sʼale

12. wet͡sʼ.nu.t͡ʃʼura

50.  xu.t͡sʼale

13. wet͡sʼ.nu.ʕaˤbra 

60.  rex.t͡sʼale

14. wet͡sʼ.nu.aʁwra

70.  waˤr.t͡sʼale

15. wet͡sʼ.nu.xura

80.  kːaˤʕt͡sʼale

16. wet͡sʼ.nu.rekːra

90.  art͡ʃʼamt͡sʼale

17. wet͡sʼ.nu.waˤra

100. darʃː

18. wet͡sʼ.nu.kːaˤʕra

200. t͡ʃʼu darʃː

19. wet͡sʼ.nu.art͡ʃʼamra

1000. aːzur <Iranian

20. ʁajal

2000. t͡ʃʼwal aːzur

Linguist providing data and dateː Dr. Dmitry Ganenkov, Institute of Linguistics, Moscow, Russia, February 15, 2014.
提供资料的语言学家: Dr. Dmitry Ganenkov, 2014 年 2 月 15 日.

Other comments: Chirag has a decimal numeral system. Chirag is an endangered language from the Dargwa branch of the East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) family, spoken in Dagestan, Russia. It is often considered a divergent dialect of Dargwa. The Ethnologue lists it under the dialects of Dargwa, but recognizes that it may be a separate language. Originally, the language is spoken in the village of Chirag (41°49’54’’ N, 47°26’02’’ E) in the highlands of Daghestan, Russia, close to the Greater Caucasian Mountain Range. Since 1991, Chirags have been leaving the native village due to difficult conditions of life in the mountains. As a result, the village has been almost depopulated, and less than 150 people remain in the village. The rest have moved to the lowlands, mostly Kaspiysk, a small city close to Makhachkala, the capital of the Republic of Daghestan. According to Chirags living in the village, there are about 800 households living in Kaspiysk. Chirag is regarded as one of numerous Dargwa dialects. However, the degree of divergence between different dialects at all levels including phonology, lexicon and morphology, is so high that scholars of East Caucasian languages generally agree that linguistically many of them represent separate languages rather than dialects of the same language. For example, Koryakov 2006 identified 17 languages within the Dargwa branch of East Caucasian. Lexicostatistics (as one of the possible measures of language divergence) shows that Chirag together with Kubachi is the most divergent of all Dargwa languages (Yury Koryakov’s (2006) counts based on a version of the Swadesh list), sharing only 67% of its basic lexicon with Standard Dargwa and 67%–84% of the basic lexicon with other dialects. The divergence of Chirag from other Dargwa languages prevents it from being used in communication with speakers of other Dargwa languages.
Sociolinguistically, Chirag does not have any official status and never has. The language of instruction in schools is Russian, some children (especially living in Chirag) are taught ‘mother tongue’ (i.e. Standard Dargwa) which is to them an almost foreign language. All mass media, including papers, radio and TV are in Russian. There is no official Chirag orthography and people use Russian in writing. Most of the ethnic group lives in the multilingual environment where Russian is the only lingua franca. In Kaspiysk, despite very positive attitude of ethnic Chirags towards their language, it is obviously losing ground, since parents often use Russian even at home in their everyday interactions with their children. Most young people (20 years old and younger) in Kaspiysk are semi-speakers of their mother tongue or lack any command of the language at all. In Chirag itself, all people including children continue to actively use the language on everyday basis, but the number of people and especially the number of children in the village is too small to ensure safe language transmission and preservation (only two children went to the first grade of the secondary school in Chirag last year). The overall number of full speakers of Chirag can be estimated as no more than 2100-2400.