الخينالوغية

Khinalug (self-name Kətş micI "Khinalug tongue") is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by ~3,000 villagers in the isolated mountain village of Khinalug, northern Azerbaijan. Long classified within Lezgic, it is now widely treated as an independent branch — a true language isolate within the family — with four noun classes and roughly 18 cases. Cut off above 2,300 m for much of the year, the village preserved an idiosyncratic vocabulary stratum and an extremely conservative sound system; a Latin orthography was developed in 2007 by Kibrik's Moscow team with local teachers.