Dargwa

Dargwa, also known as Dargva or Dargi, is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by the Dargwa people primarily in Dagestan, Russia. It comprises multiple dialects, with Northern Dargwa and Southern Dargwa as major varieties and regional forms such as Kaitag. Estimates of speakers place the language in the hundreds of thousands, making it one of the more widely spoken Dagestani languages.

Linguistically, Dargwa is part of the Northeast Caucasian language family and is distinguished by a rich consonant inventory and highly agglutinative morphology. The language employs extensive affixation on nouns and especially on verbs, with the verbal system encoding aspects such as tense, mood, and evidentiality. Noun phrases carry various case markings, and word order is generally subject–object–verb, though grammatical relations are reinforced by case and agreement, allowing some syntactic flexibility.

The writing system for Dargwa is primarily Cyrillic, with a standard orthography developed during the Soviet period and used in education, media, and published literature within Dagestan. In addition to formal texts, Dargwa maintains a substantial body of oral literature and modern writings. The language coexists with Russian and other Dagestani languages in the region and is used in local schools, broadcasting, and cultural activities to varying degrees.