[1] Furthermore, it is spoken by thousands of members of the Abkhazian diaspora in Turkey, Georgia's autonomous republic of Adjara, Syria, Jordan, and several Western countries.

Grammatically, the two are very similar; however, the differences in phonology are substantial, it also contains elements characteristic of Kabardian;[12][13] these are the main reasons for many others[14][15] to prefer keeping the two separate, while others[13][10] still refer to it as the Tapanta dialect of Abkhaz.

The Turkish census denotes 13,951, but the figures are dubious, since the numbers of Abkhazians that came from the beginning of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th have been documented at around 30 thousand.

[22][23][9] Abkhazian villages are concentrated around the cities of Adapazarı, Düzce, Sinop, Hendek and Samsun in the northern part, and in the west around cities such as Bilecik, Inegöl and Eskişehir; they are mainly found in the provinces of Sakarya and Bolu in the western part, and near the Çoruh river in the north-east.

It was suggested that certain inscriptions on Ancient Greek pottery which had been considered nonsense are in fact written in Abkhaz-Adydge languages.

[37] In 1918, Tbilisi State University became the first institution of higher education to teach Abkhazian language.

The founders of the university began to take care of the development and scientific study of the Abkhazian language.

At the meeting of the Council of Professors held at Tbilisi State University in 1918, Ivane Javakhishvili noted the scientific importance of studying Caucasian languages.

In 1918, by the decision of the Council of Professors, Petre Charaia was invited to teach the Abkhazian language, and from 1925, this mission was continued by Dimitri Gulia and Simon Janashia.

The 1992 law of Georgia, reiterated in the 1995 constitution, grants Abkhaz the status of second official language in the territory of Abkhazia — along with Georgian.

Abzhywa has adopted many loans from Kartvelian, specially Mingrelian; Sadz on the other hand has more words from Circassian.

By contrast, the language has only two phonemically distinct vowels, which have several allophones depending on the palatal and/or labial quality of adjacent consonants.

Plain alveolo-palatal consonants and the pharyngealised and labialised-pharyngealised uvular fricatives are unique to the Bzyp dialect.

The quality of 'ә' in this case, is usually represented as [ɨ] if the vowel is in a stressed position, and being unaffected by its neighbouring consonants.

The Georgian script was adopted and used between 1938 and 1954, after that the initial Cyrillic alphabet, designed in 1892 by Dmitry Gulia together with Konstantin Machavariani and modified in 1909 by Aleksey Chochua, was restored to use.

[57] All Latin transliterations in this section utilize the system explicated in Chirikba (2003) (see Abkhaz alphabet for the details).

"[59] Chirikba (2003) describes Abkhaz as a "verbocentric" language wherein verbs occupy the "central part of the morphology.

[61] Abkhaz, being an ergative language, makes a strong distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs, as well as dynamic and stative.

Stative verbs describe states of being, roughly analogous to copular phrases in English, as in дхәыҷуп (d-x˚əčә́-wə-p - "she is a child").

Dynamic verbs possess the full range of aspect, mood and tense forms, in contrast to statives, which do not.

[62] Another important verbal distinction in Abkhaz is finite versus non-finite, referring to the duration of the action[clarification needed].

[62] Verb stems can be derived in a number of ways, including compounding, affixation, reduplication or conversion from another part of speech.

[63] Roughly equivalent to the infinitive,[59] or to a so-called "verbal noun,"[64] the Masdar form of the verb resembles the English gerund.

[65] аԥхьараá-px’a-raART-read-MSDаԥхьараá-px’a-raART-read-MSD"to read/be reading"Various prefixes can be added to the Masdar to form entire dependent clauses, as in[59] аԥибаҽраa-pә́-j+ba-č-raART-PREV-RECI-break-MSDаԥибаҽраa-pә́-j+ba-č-raART-PREV-RECI-break-MSD"breaking each other"However, the fully conjugated personal Abkhaz verb forms are "templatic," with each grammatical distinction occupying a specific "slot" or "position" within the broader verb template.

[70] Example of an absolutive construction with the intransitive subject in the first slot highlighted[70] сцоитs-cá-wa-jtI(S)-go-PRES:DYN-FINсцоитs-cá-wa-jtI(S)-go-PRES:DYN-FIN"I go.

"Example of an ergative construction with the direct object in the first slot highlighted[70] избоитjə-z-ba-wá-jtit(DO)-I(A)-see-PRES:DYN-FINизбоитjə-z-ba-wá-jtit(DO)-I(A)-see-PRES:DYN-FIN"I see it.

[60] Taken as a whole, the entire morphological structure of the Abkhaz noun is as follows: As with verbs, not all of these elements can occur at the same time.

"[83]Similarly, the suffix -a can be added to a proper noun ending in a consonant to communicate respect and endearment.

In addition to noun-marking, possession can be indicated by adding the suffix -тәы́ (-t’˚ә́) to the short version of a personal pronoun.

[88] Thus: аиҳаajháибзиоуjəbzә́jawаҩныajºnә́аиҳа ибзиоу аҩныajhá jəbzә́jaw ajºnә́"a better house"иҟаԥшӡаjəq’apšʒáиҟаԥшӡаjəq’apšʒá"reddest"Дарбанзаалак ауаҩы дшоуп ихы дақәиҭны.