In 1823, Julius Heinrich von Klaproth published a list of 67 Laz words with German translations in his Asia Polyglotta.

In 1844, Georg Rosen published in German the first monograph on Laz, Über die Sprache der Lazen.

The northern coast and coastal mountains of Asia Minor were dominated by Kartvelian peoples at least as far west as Samsun.

The order of the peoples living along the coast to the east of Trebizond was as follows: Colchi (and Sanni); Machelones; Heniochi; Zydritae; Lazai, subjects of King Malassus, who owned the suzerainty of Rome; Apsilae; Abacsi; and Sanigae near Sebastopolis.

It is presently used only for familiar and casual interaction; for literary, business, and other purposes, Laz speakers use their country's official language (Turkish or Georgian).

Since then, all attempts to create a written tradition in Zan have failed, despite the fact that most intellectuals use it as a literary language.

Nonetheless, 1991 saw the publication of a textbook called Nana-nena ('Mother tongue'), which was aimed at all Laz speakers and used both the Latin and Georgian alphabets.

Because speaking Laz was banned in public areas, many children lost their mother tongue as a result of not communicating with their parents.

[11] The nouns are inflected with agglutinative suffixes to indicate grammatical function (four to seven cases, depending on the dialect) and number (singular or plural), but not by gender.

The Laz verb is inflected with suffixes according to person and number, and also for grammatical tense, aspect, mood, and (in some dialects) evidentiality.