Ingush language

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Ingush
ГІалгІай Ğalğaj
Spoken in: Russia, Kazakhstan 
Region: Ingushetia, Chechnya
Total speakers: ~400,000
Language family: Caucasian (disputed)
 North (disputed)
  Northeast
   Veinakh (Chechen-Ingush)
    Ingush 
Official status
Official language in: Ingushetia (federal subject of Russia)
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: inh
ISO 639-3: inh
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Ingush is a language spoken by approximately 415,000 people (2005), known as the Ingush, across a region covering Ingushetia, Chechnya, Kazakhstan and Russia. In Ingush, the language is called ГІалгІай Ğalğaj (pronounced [ʁəlʁɑj]).

Contents

[edit] Classification

Ingush and Chechen, together with Bats, constitute the Nakh branch of the Northeast Caucasian language family.

[edit] Geographic distribution

Ingush is spoken by about 415,000 people (2005), primarily across a region in the Caucasus covering parts of Russia, primarily Ingushetia and Chechnya. Speakers can also be found in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Belgium, Norway, Turkey and Jordan.

[edit] Official status

Ingush and Russian are the official languages of Ingushetia, a federal subject of Russia.

[edit] Writing system

Ingush became a written language with an Arabic-based writing system at the beginning of the 20th century. After the October revolution it first used a Latin alphabet which was later replaced by Cyrillic letters.

[edit] External links

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