Chechen
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A language of Russian Federation
1,350,000 in Russian Federation (2010 census). 233,000 monolinguals. Ethnic population: 1,430,000 (2010 census). Total users in all countries: 1,486,300.
Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetiya Republics; Stavropol’skiy Kray; north Caucasus, most in rural areas.
2 (Provincial). Statutory provincial language in Chechen Republic (1993, Constitution, Article 68(2)).
Ploskost, Itumkala (Shatoi), Melkhin, Kistin, Cheberloi, Akkin (Aux). Chechen partially intelligible with Ingush [inh]. Melkhi transitional dialect to Ingush.
Ergative case system; many consonants and vowels; extensive inflectional morphology, many nominal cases, several gender classes; complex sentences by chaining participial clauses; verbs have gender agreement with the direct object or intransitive subject, but no person agreement (Nichols 1995).
Largest Nakh-Daghestanian language. Used in publishing. Also use Russian [rus].
Cyrillic script [Cyrl].
Many Russians, Ingush, Ossetins, and other peoples live among them. From 1944–1957, they were deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia losing 25%–50% of the population, much land, economic resources, and civil rights. They have been largely removed from productive lowlands. Muslim.