Chechen
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A language of Russian Federation
1,350,000 (2010 census). 233,000 monolinguals. Ethnic population: 1,430,000 (2010 census). Total users in all countries: 1,496,300.
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)). Statutory language of provincial identity in Dagestan Autonomous Republic (1994, Constitution, Article 10).
Ploskost, Itumkala (Shatoi), Melkhin, Kistin, Cheberloi, Akkin (Aux). The Akkin people in western Dagestan have a strong self-identity and consider themselves distinct from Chechen. 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.