Adygea

Adygea (or Adygeya) is a small autonomous republic in the Caucasus, in southern Russia, enclosed in the Krasnodar region on the Black Sea, though it does not itself have a coast. Its capital is Maykop, Adyge name Myjeqwape, and its area is about 3900 km².

The people are Adyge (or Adyghe), traditionally called Circassians. They speak the North-West Caucasian language Adyge. The population is about 400 000. The Circassian people also include the Kabardians of Kabardino-Balkaria and the Cherkess of Karachay-Cherkessia.

The Scottish scholar David Urquhart designed a flag for the Circassian tribes fighting Russia in the 1830s, which was green with an arc of golden stars above three golden crossed arrows. This was the basis for the post-Soviet-Union flag adopted in 1992, which had twelve stars for the twelve tribes. The flag law of modern Adygea says green but it shows a specific shade of dark aquamarine. In practice the flags flown are green.

Between 1917 and 1920 Adyge was effectively independent between Tsarist and Soviet rule, and bore a white crescent and star flag like Turkey's, except that the background was red above green.

The national epic of Adygea is called the Nart.

The presidents of Adygea since the end of the Soviet Union have been:

1. Aslan Jarimov 1992-2002
2. Khazrat Sovmen 2002-

The Adyge name for their own language is Adygabze. The only sample I have found is in Cyrillic, with a poor "phonetic" transcription into roman letters. Rather than use that I shall make up my own transcription:

ary           yes
x'au          no
täräz         true/right
täräzäp       not true/not right
x`un          OK
symysh|ax     I am  sorry
k`ysfäg`äg`u  forgive me
syshxät       I am going to eat
syshxätäp     I don't want to eat
mälak|ä säl|ä I am hungry
sik|as        I like
psy           water
sjesh`oräp    I don't drink
gu l`ystag`   I understood
njepä         today
tyg`uasä      yesterday
njeushchy     tomorrow
myg`ä         this year
g`ärjek|o     last year
fabä          hot
ch`y|ä        cold
tx`ag`o       fun
sypfägush|o   I am happy for you
k`a|o         come/coming
g`ogu         road
chylä         1. everybody; 2 = village
bä            a lot
mak|ä         little (quantity)
x`jark|ä      see you later
sälam ja|ozh' give my regards

I've used ä for a letter that doesn't occur in Russian, a reversed è, which seems to be some kind of a sound. The poor transcription uses R for my g` so I suppose that's a velar fricative. The pipe sign | is used in Cyrillic in Chechen for pharyngalized consonants, and by itself represents the Arabic ain. The soft sign ' and hard sign ` make new consonants somehow: the North Caucasian languages are rich in diffiuclt consonants.