Rutul

Rutul (МыхӀабишды чӀел / Myhabišdy čʼel — literally "language of the Mukhad people") is a Northeast Caucasian language of the Tsakhur-Rutul subgroup of the Lezgic branch, spoken by around 30,000 people in the Rutulsky District of southern Dagestan and a handful of villages in the Sheki area of Azerbaijan. Within Lezgic, Rutul forms a coordinate node with its closest relative Tsakhur (tkr). Typologically Rutul shows the canonical Lezgic profile: large consonant inventory with ejective and pharyngealized series, ergative-absolutive alignment, four noun classes (masculine, feminine, two non-human), and an elaborate spatial case system. Rutul became a written language only in 1990 when a Cyrillic-based orthography was adopted under Dagestan's minority-language program, and instruction in Rutul began in the early 1990s.