Abkhaz is characterised by unusual consonant clusters and a small vowel inventory. It has only two distinctive vowels: an open vowel /a/ and a closed vowel /ı, ǝ/. Depending on the environment both of the vowels can be realized as [e,i,o,u]. Abzhuy Abkhaz has 58 consonants, whereas Bzyp has 67.
The first fragments of Abkhaz that we have were taken down in the Arabic alphabet by the Turkish traveller Evliya Celebi in the 11th century. Abkhaz has only been a full literary language for about 100 years, and during the Stalinist Russian years Abkhaz was banned as a literary language. Abkhaz has its own alphabet, based on Cyrillic, and is now the national language of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia.
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