- Tevfik Esenç
Tevfik Esenç (1904 –
October 7 ,1992 ) was a Circassian exile inTurkey and the last known speaker of theUbykh language .Esenç was raised by his Ubykh-speaking grandparents for a time in the village of
Hacı Osman in Turkey, and he served a term as the "muhtar" (mayor) of that village, before receiving a post in thecivil service ofIstanbul . There, he was able to do a great deal of work with the French linguistGeorges Dumézil to help record his language.Blessed with an excellent memory, and understanding quickly the goals of Dumézil and the other linguists who came to visit him, he was the primary source of not only the Ubykh language, but also of the
mythology ,culture and customs of theUbykh people . He spoke not only Ubykh, but also the Hakuchi dialect of Adyghe, allowing some comparative work to be done between these two members of the Northwest Caucasian family. He was also a fluent speaker of Turkish. He was a purist, and hisidiolect of Ubykh was considered by Dumézil as the closest thing to a standard "literary" Ubykh language that existed.Esenç died in 1992 at the age of 88. The inscription that he wanted on his gravestone read as follows:
"This is the grave of Tevfik Esenç. He was the last person able to speak the language they called Ubykh."
External links
* [http://www.circassianworld.com/tevfikesench.html Tevfik Esenç's page in Circassian World]
* [http://lacito.vjf.cnrs.fr/archivage/languages/Ubykh.htm Sample Sound Files of Ubykh Language] , from theLacito Archive
*YouTube: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRj-8oCmnkU Tevfik Esenç narrating the story of the two travellers and the fish in Ubykh]
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