   the laz language (áááá£á á áááá, lazuri nena; , lazuri ena, or á­ááá£á á ááá, Ã§Ìanuri ena, also chanuri ena; ) is a kartvelian language spoken by the laz people on the southeast shore of the black sea.http://books.google.ro/books?id=va6osxzojzoc&pg=pa21&dq=laz+tzannoi&ei=p-vys_gqdkqqkatiiiilbg&cd=2&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=laz%20tzannoi&f=false it is estimated that there are around 20,000 native speakers of laz in turkey, in a strip of land extending from melyat to the georgian border (officially called lazistan until 1925), and about 2,000 in georgia. == classification == laz is one of the four south caucasian languages. along with mingrelian, it forms the zan branch of this kartvelian language family. the two languages are very closely related, to the extent that some linguists refer to mingrelian and laz as dialects or regional variants of a single zan language, a view held officially in the soviet era and still so in georgia today. in general, however, mingrelian and laz are considered as separate languages, due both to the long-standing separation of their communities of speakers (500 years) and to a lack of mutual intelligibility. the laz are shifting to the turkish of trebizond,(cf. pisarev in zapiski voirao [1901], xiii, 173-201) in which the harmony of the vowels is much neglected.http://colchianstudies.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/47-laz-minorsky.pdf == geographical distribution == the georgian language, along with its relatives mingrelian, laz, and svan, comprises the kartvelian (south caucasian) language family. the initial breakup of proto-kartvelian is estimated to have been around 2500â2000 b.c., with the divergence of svan from proto-kartvelian (nichols, 1998). assyrian, urartian, greek, and roman documents reveal that in early historical times (2ndâ1st millennia b.c.), the numerous kartvelian tribes were in the process of migrating into the caucasus from the southwest. the northern coast and coastal mountains of asia minor were dominated by kartvelian peoples at least as far west as samsun. their eastward migration may have been set in motion by the
Agglutinative_languages Endangered_Caucasian_languages Kartvelian_languages Languages_of_Georgia_(country) Languages_of_Turkey