Dictionary of Laz Plant Names
Irfan Çağatay
Laz, a South Caucasian language, is spoken in the North East of Turkey. It is also the part of the country abundant with rain. Located at the eastern end of the Pontus mountain range, which is the continuation of the Caucasian mountains, this place was split with valleys stretching to the Kaçkar summit at an altitude of 3937 meters. Traditional corn farming in low and inefficient agricultural areas has been replaced by tea plantations.
The Laz language was classified as “clearly endangered" languages by UNESCO in 2008. Laz, whose speakers are decreasing from generation to generation, is largely abandoned by young Laz people. Factors such as the end of the traditional agricultural economy, urbanization, migration and the gradual withdrawal of Laz language from modern life has lead to the endangering of plant names in particular. This knowledge, which is preserved only in people who have a relationship with agriculture and animal husbandry over a certain age, will be forgotten with this generation.
This study aims to compile forgotten Laz plant names. For this purpose, 1022 Laz plant names belonging to about 320 taxa were collected and identified by interviewing more than one hundred people. The English and Turkish and Latin names of the identified plants were included into the description.
Furthermore, the Mingrelian, Svan and Georgian plant names have been added to the lists, where possible, which enables the reader to compare, as these languages have linguistic and geographic relationships to Laz.
The book consists of two chapters. One finds the plant names in Laz in the first part, and in the second part one finds indices in Turkish, English, Georgian, Svan, Mingrelian and Latin.
ISBN 9783862902118. LINCOM Scientific Dictionaries 03. 80pp. 2020.
