It is related among the Turks, that on one occasion, a Sultan of great repute for his learning sent an eminent student, belonging to the College of the Oolama at Constantinople, to the Caucasus, for the purpose of there acquiring a knowledge of the Addee-ghey language, with the ultimate intention of compiling a Grammar and Dictionary. After being absent for a considerable time, he returned to his master hopeless of success, and carrying in his hand a bag of pebbles. “There,” said he, shaking the bag, “I can give you no better imitation than that of the sounds of the language spoken by that people.”

L. Loewe

A dictionary of the Circassian language, 1854

About this section

The Circassian language's phonetics, with its abundance of sounds and their variety, is relatively difficult for students. Most of them have never had anything to do with such an exotic and unique phonetic system. It may be less difficult for the Russian-speaking students, because the alphabet is formed of Cyrillic letters. This helps with the simple (one-character) letters, they are pronounced equally to their Russian counterparts.

This section describes and characterizes all of the Circassian phonemes. It must be noticed, though, that  the Temirgoy (Chemguy) dialect, the official dialect of the Circassian literature, is described here. The other dialects (Abadzeh, Bzhedugh, Shapsug) may have some slight differences.