Background

Language Family: North Caucasian / Northwest / Circassian

Kabardian is spoken in Western Russia, specifically in the Kabardino-Balkar republic, North Ossetia-Alania republic, and Stavropol Krai.

Phonology

Consonants

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Alveopalatal	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Stops	p pʼ b	t tʼ d				kʷ kʷʼ ɡʷ	q qʷ qʼ qʷʼ		ʔ ʔʷ
Affricates		ts tsʼ dz	tʃ tʃʼ dʒ
Fricatives	f fʼ v	s z	ʃ ʒ	ɕ ɕʼ ʑ		x xʷ ɣ	χ χʷ ʁ ʁʷ	ħ	h
Nasals	m	n
Trills		r
Approximants	w	ɬ ɬʼ ɮ			j
Note: Phonemes that have the diacritic (ʼ) are ejectives; phonemes that have the diacritic /ʷ/ are labialized; phonemes that have (ʷʼ) are labialized ejectives. The alveolar approximants are lateral fricatives.

Vowels

Vowel height is the only contrastive feature among Kabardian vowels (i.e. backness is not phonemic) (Gordon and Applebaum 2006, 28).
There is some debate as to whether or not /aː/ is a phoneme in Kabardian, however, Gordon and Applebaum (2006) explain that it is not entirely predictable (p. 28). I will treat it as a phoneme.
A lot of free variation occurs with the production of vowels, so many of the vowels that are phonemic in other languages do arise in Kabardian (Pittman and Kuipers 1963, 22).
/ə/ can also be epenthetic given certain environments (Colarusso 1992, 18).

	Central
High
Mid	ə
Low	a aː
Note: The low central vowel on the right is long.

Alphabet

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
а	/aː/
э	/a/
б	/b/
в	/v/
г	/ɣ/
д	/d/
е	/a/	realized phonetically as [e]
ё	/jo/	appears in Russian loanwords
ж	/ʒ/
з	/z/
и	/jə/
й	/j/
к	/k/
л	/ɮ/
м	/m/
н	/n/
о	/aw/	rarely used
п	/p/
р	/r/
с	/s/
т	/t/
у	/w/	indicates labialization
ф	/f/
х	/x/
ц	/ts/
ч	/tʃ/
ш	/ʃ/
щ	/ɕ/
ъ		used in combination to indicate uvularization (otherwise used in Russian loanwords)
ы	/ə/
ь		used in combination to indicate palatalization (otherwise used in Russian loanwords)
ю	/jə/
я	/jaː/
ӏ	/ʔ/	indicates ejectivization in combination
Multigraph
гу	/ɡʷ/
гъ	/ʁ/
гъу	/ʁʷ/
дж	/dʒ/
дз	/dz/
жь	/ʑ/
ку	/kʷ/
къ	/q/
къу	/qʷ/
кхъ	/qʼ/
кхъу	/qʷʼ/
кӏ	/tʃʼ/
кӏу	/kʷʼ/
лъ	/ɬ/
лӏ	/ɬʼ/
пӏ	/pʼ/
тӏ	/tʼ/
фӏ	/fʼ/
ху	/xʷ/
хъ	/χ/
хъу	/χʷ/
хь	/ħ/
цӏ	/tsʼ/
чӏ	/tʃʼ/
Щӏ	/ɕʼ/
ӏу	/ʔʷ/

Lenition Rules

/ɕ’/, /ts’/, and /tʃ’/ are sometimes voiced word-medially (Pittman and Kuipers 1963, 19).

References

Colarusso, John. 1992. A Grammar of the Kabardian Language. Calgary [Alta.: University of Calgary Press. http://www.deslibris.ca/ID/402722.

Gordon, Matthew, and Ayla Applebaum. 2006. “Phonetic Structures of Turkish Kabardian.” Journal of the International Phonetic Association 36 (2): 159–86. doi:10.1017/S0025100306002532.

Pittman, R. S., and Aert H. Kuipers. 1963. “Phoneme and Morpheme in Kabardian (Eastern Adyghe).” Language 39 (2): 346. doi:10.2307/411222.

Kabardian