Ingush language
Ingush (; , , pronounced ) is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by about 500,000 people, known as the Ingush, across a region covering the Russian republics of Ingushetia and Chechnya. Classification. Ingush and Chechen, together with Bats, constitute the Nakh branch of the Northeast Caucasian language family. There is pervasive passive bilingualism between Ingush and Chechen. Geographic distribution. Ingush is spoken by about 413,000 people (2002), primarily across a region in the Caucasus covering parts of Russia, primarily Ingushetia and Chechnya. Speakers can also be found in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Belgium, Norway, Turkey and Jordan. Official status. Ingush is, alongside Russian , an official language of Ingushetia, a federal subject of Russia. Writing system. Ingush became a written language with an Arabic-based writing system at the beginning of the 20th century. After the October Revolution it first used a Latin alphabet, which was later replaced by Cyrillic. Phonology. Vowels. The diphthongs are иэ /ie/, уо /uo/, оа , ий /ij/, эи /ei/, ои /oi/, уи /ui/, ов /ow/, ув /uw/. Consonants. The consonants of Ingush are as follows, including the Latin orthography developed by Johanna Nichols: Dialects. Ingush is not divided into dialects with the exception of Galain-Ch'azh (native name: Галайн -ЧӀаж), which is considered to be transitional between Chechen and Ingush. Grammar. Ingush is a nominative–accusative language in its syntax, though it has ergative morphology. Case. The most recent and in-depth analysis of the language shows eight cases: nominative, ergative, genitive, dative, allative, instrumental, lative and comparative. Numerals. Like many Northeast Caucasian languages, Ingush uses a vigesimal system, where numbers lower than twenty are counted as in a base-ten system, but higher decads are base-twenty. Word order. In Ingush, "for main clauses, other than episode-initial and other all-new ones, verb-second order is most  common. The verb, or the finite part of a compound verb or analytic tense form (i.e. the light verb or the auxiliary), follows the first word or phrase in the clause".