Budukh

Budukh (Будад мез / Budad mez) is a critically endangered Northeast Caucasian language of the Shahdagh subgroup of the Lezgic branch, spoken by approximately 200 people in the single village of Buduq in the Quba District of northeastern Azerbaijan. Within Lezgic, Budukh forms a small Shahdagh cluster together with its closest relative Kryts (kry), both descending from a common proto-Shahdagh ancestor. Typologically Budukh has the Lezgic hallmarks — large consonant inventory with ejectives and pharyngealized phonemes, ergative-absolutive alignment, three to four noun classes, and a complex spatial case system — but unlike Lezgian or Tabasaran has no official orthography, and intergenerational transmission has largely shifted to Azerbaijani.