During the last years interest towards Russia's small nations, their  languages, cultures, history, and traditions has been increasing. This can be explained by the country's shifting towards democratization of its whole social and political life. The Circassian language and culture have been touched by this trend too.

It is well known that in every region of the country, including the Republic of Adygeya region, people of different ethnicities live, study, and work together. Every year a significant amount of guests and tourists come to the republic to see its beauty and to get familiar with the ancient Circassian culture. It is natural for them to strongly desire to speak to the indigenous population using their own ancient language.

Without any doubt, speaking local language makes friendship, mutual sympathy, and understanding grow stronger, it increases psychological compatibility between people of different ethnic groups. For that to happen the visitors have to know the local nation's language. Unfortunately, for those who want to study the Circassian language there are no easily available dictionaries, phrasebooks or study materials yet.

This material's main task is to provide a multidimensional course which includes a description of the Circassian phonetics, grammar, some didactics and methodological recommendations, a short (Circassian-Russian-English) catalog of the most commonly used words and expressions, Russian-Circassian and Circassian-Russian dictionaries, and several texts in the Circassian language for reading.

From the very beginning of using this material it is important to learn the Circassian language's alphabet, including all the descriptions of the appropriate sounds (phonemes). Learn the correct pronunciation of at least several words which contain the sound you are studying at the moment (didactics from the “Studying the Circassian Language” section help with the task of getting through  the phonetics); carefully review the grammar rules of the Circassian language, that would help you to build Circassian sentences correctly; get the words from our published dictionaries as soon as it becomes possible for you to build more difficultly structured expressions; use the Circassian texts to practice your pronunciation and reading skills.

In the catalog of the most used words and expressions there are no points to the words' main or figurative meanings, because such differentiation of their semantics does not really affect the main purpose, which is studying the Circassian language. If a word has several meanings, then the most commonly used ones are listed together and separated by comma. For example: throw "дзын", "ч1эдзы́н"; climb "дэк1ое́н", "къыкъок1ы́н", "къэк1ы́н"; put inside "илъхьа́н", "дэлъхьа́н" etc.

Using the catalog have in mind the following notices:

1. Stress sign is the dash shown over the appropriate vowel. For example: girl "пшъашъэ́" (stress over the last э), grandfather "тэтэ́жъ" (э), village "къуа́дж" (а).
2. In the written Circassian language the Cyrillic signs (the same signs that are used in the Russian language) are used. In addition to them the sign "1" (the sign for the Arab digit “one”, traditionally the Roman "I" is used) was introduced to the alphabet. Combinations of two to three Cyrillic signs form complex Circassian letters in order to express the specific (guttural, labial, occlusive, fricative, lateral) sounds . For example: гъ, гъу, къ, къу, к1, к1у, жъ, жъу, шъ, шъу, ш1, ш1у and others. Each of these combinations expresses only one single sound (phoneme), like in English the “sh” combination of the word “shop” expresses only one sound.
3. There are a lot of sounds in the Circassian language that are not in English. For example: жь, жъ, хь, хъ, дз, дзу, хъу, гъу, жъу, п1у and others.
4. Vowels in all positions are pronounced equally clear.
5. The voiced consonants б, г, з, ж, в do not turn into voiceless, except for the rare occasions when, being in conjunction with some of the voiceless consonants, they turn into voiceless, like: бгъэк1о́н "send", but пфэк1о́н "go for your sake".
6. The voiceless aspirated consonants к, п do not turn into voiced before the voiced consonants.
7. In order to correctly understand the Circassian pronunciation, especially of some sounds and their combinations, one should use help of the Circassians who can clearly speak the language.
8. Like in English, the Circassian words have no gender.
9. Unlike English, where only pronouns and (slightly) verbs change their form depending on person, in the Circassian language this type of variation is more important. For example: сэ се́джэ "I read" (present), о уе́джэ "you read" (present and singular), ар е́джэ "he reads", тэ те́джэ "we read", шъо шъуе́джэ "you read" (plural), ахэ́р е́джэх "they read".