Tevfik Esenç

Tevfik Esenç (1904 – October 7th 1992) one was exiled Tcherkesse in Turkey, and the last known speaker of the language oubykh.

Esenç was raised by his/her grandparent, who spoke oubykh, in the village of Hacı Osman in Turkey. He exerted the function of muhtar (Maire) of this village, before seeing himself allotting a station in the civil service to Istanbul. There it was able to carry out an important work with the linguist French Georges Dumézil in order to preserve a trace of this language.

Equipped with an excellent memory, and having quickly included/understood the objectives of Dumézil and other linguists who visited him, it was a source of foreground not only for the language oubykh, but also for the Mythologie, the Culture and the traditions of Oubykhs. In addition to the oubykh, he spoke also the dialect Hakuchi about the adyghé, which made it possible to carry out a comparative work between these two representatives of the family of the languages of the North-West of the the Caucasus. He controlled also the Turkish . It was a purist, and its Idiolecte of the oubykh was regarded by Dumézil as nearest possible to a standard oubykh “arts person”.

Esenç died in 1992, at the 88 years age. The epitaph which it itself had chosen said:

“ This is fall it from Tevfik Esenç. He was the last person able to speak the language which one called the oubykh. ”

One says to his death: " Our sorrow is immense, but contrary to the old Greek and the Latin , we preserve each word of this language on Magnetic band. "

Sources

External bonds

Page “Tevfik Esenç” on '' Circassian World ''
sound Samples of the language oubykh, Files of the Lacito
YouTube: Account in oubykh by Tevfik Esenç of the history of the two travellers and the fish

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