Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Chuvash

TOTAL SPEAKERS

USAGE BY COUNTRY (OFFICIAL LANGUAGE)

Russia

BACKGROUND

Chuvash is the most distinctive of the Turkic languages and cannot be understood by speakers of other Turkic tongues. Chuvash is classified, alongside the extinct language Bulgar, as the only remaining member of the Oghuric branch of the Turkic language family. Since the surviving literary records for the non-Chuvash members of Oghuric are scant, the exact position of Chuvash within the Oghuric family cannot be determined.The Oghuric branch is distinguished from the rest of the Turkic family (the Common Turkic languages) by two sound changes: r corresponding to Common Turkic z, and l corresponding to Common Turkic ş.Formerly, scholars considered Chuvash not properly a Turkic language at all but, rather, a Turkicised Finno-Ugric (Uralic) language.