The Abaza language (Абаза Бызшва/Abaza Byzšwa) is a language of the Caucasus mountains in the Russian autonomous republic of Karachay-Cherkessia. It consists of two dialects, the Ashkherewa dialect and the T'ap'anta dialect, which is the literary standard.
Abaza is spoken by approximately 35,000 people in Russia, where it is written using a modified Cyrillic alphabet, as well as another 10,000 in Turkey, where the Roman alphabet is used.
Abaza, like its relatives in the family of Northwest Caucasian languages, is highly agglutinative and has a large consonantal inventory (63 phonemes) coupled with a minimal vowel inventory (two vowels). It is very closely related to Abkhaz, but it preserves a few phonemes which Abkhaz lacks, such as a pharyngeal voiced fricative. Work on Abaza has been carried out by W. S. Allen, Brian O'Herin, and John Colarusso.
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