Imagine walking through the sun-drenched streets of a quiet village in the Lower Galilee. You pass a schoolyard and hear children shouting. You expect to hear Hebrew or perhaps Arabic, given the region. Instead, you hear a cacophony of ejectives, complex consonant clusters, and a rhythm that sounds entirely alien to the Middle East. You are in Kfar Kama, and you are listening to Adyghe—a language originally spoken in the cool, rugged peaks of the North Caucasus.

How did a language native to the Russian republic of Adygea, specifically the region surrounding the city of Maykop, become the mother tongue of thousands in a small Israeli enclave? The answer is a fascinating tapestry of tragedy, resilience, and unique linguistic preservation.

The Linguistic Anomaly: What is Adyghe?

Before understanding the journey, one must appreciate the cargo being carried. Adyghe (often referred to as West Circassian) belongs to the Northwest Caucasian language family. For linguists, it is something of a “Mount Everest”—notorious for its complexity and beauty.

While English relies heavily on vowels to distinguish meaning, Adyghe is a language of consonants. Depending on the dialect, it boasts between 50 to 60 distinct consonant sounds, but remarkably, distinct linguistic analysis suggests it has as few as three phonemic vowels. To the untrained ear, it sounds percussive and flowing, like water rushing over stones.

The language is also polysynthetic. This means that a single word in Adyghe can express what would require an entire sentence in English. A word can contain the subject, object, tense, mood, and location all distinctively agglutinated together. For example, a phrase like “I did not make him write it” might be expressed as a single, complex verbal form.

The Great Dispersion: 1864 and the Exile

To understand how Adyghe traveled from Maykop to the Middle East, we must look to the 19th century. The Circassians, the indigenous people of the Northwest Caucasus, fought a hundred-year war against the expanding Russian Empire. The conflict ended largely in 1864, resulting in a devastating defeat for the Circassians.

What followed was one of the largest ethnic cleansings of the 19th century. Around 90% of the Circassian population was exiled to the Ottoman Empire. These exiles, known as Muhajirs, were scattered across Ottoman lands—from the Balkans to modern-day Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine.

The Ottomans strategically placed Circassian settlements in border regions to serve as buffers and guards. Kfar Kama was founded in 1876 by Shapsug tribesmen (a sub-group of the Adyghe nation). While the empire they served eventually collapsed, the village—and the language—remained.

Kfar Kama: An Island of Preservation

In the global diaspora, language death is a common tragedy. In Turkey, where the largest population of Circassians resides, assimilation policies throughout the 20th century led to a steep decline in fluent speakers. However, the story in Israel is uniquely different.

In Kfar Kama (and its sister village, Rehaniya), Adyghe is not just a language of the home; it is a language of the street, the municipality, and crucially, the classroom. Because the Circassians in Israel serve in the military and are integrated into the state while maintaining cultural autonomy, they have managed to secure a unique educational status.

• The Curriculum: Children in Kfar Kama grow up trilingual. They learn Hebrew (the national language), English (the international language), and Adyghe. In lower grades, Adyghe is often the language of instruction.
• The Script: Adyghe uses the Cyrillic alphabet. This is a vital linguistic link. By using the same script used in Maykop today, the diaspora maintains the ability to read literature produced in the homeland.
• Street Signs: Linguistic landscape matters. In Kfar Kama, street signs are often displaying Hebrew, Arabic, and Adyghe (in Cyrillic).

The Connection to Maykop: Dialects and Standardization

This is where the linguistics gets tricky. The Circassians are divided into twelve major tribes, each with its own dialect. The founders of Kfar Kama were Shapsug, and the villagers speak the Shapsug dialect in their daily lives.

However, the literary standard of the Adyghe language—the version used in books, news, and higher education in the Republic of Adygea—is based on the Temirgoy dialect. Maykop, the capital of Adygea, is the center of this standardization.

For decades, the diaspora was cut off from the homeland due to the Iron Curtain. When the Soviet Union collapsed, a linguistic bridge was rebuilt. Educators from Kfar Kama traveled to Maykop, and teachers from Maykop came to Israel. The decision was made to teach the Literary Standard (Temirgoy) in Israeli Circassian schools, even though the children speak Shapsug at home.

This creates a situation similar to Swiss German versus High German. The children possess diglossia: they speak the village vernacular with their grandmothers but read and write the standardized language of Maykop in school. This ensures they remain part of the global Adyghe nation rather than an isolated linguistic island.

Current Status in the Middle East

While Kfar Kama is a “star pupil” of language preservation, the status of Adyghe varies elsewhere in the region:

Turkey

Turkey hosts the largest Circassian population, numbering in the millions. However, for decades, speaking non-Turkish languages was politically discouraged or banned. Today, there is a cultural renaissance. Universities have opened Circassian language departments, and elective courses are available in some schools. Yet, the generation gap is visible; many grandparents speak Adyghe, while their grandchildren only understand a few words.

Jordan

In Jordan, Circassians hold a prestigious place in society (historically forming the King’s royal guard). While the community is politically strong, the language is endangered. Urbanization in Amman has led to Arabic becoming the dominant language for the youth. However, the Prince Hamzah School in Amman offers Adyghe language classes, attempting to replicate the success seen in other diaspora communities.

Why Linguistics Matters for Survival

The survival of the Adyghe language in a village like Kfar Kama proves a fundamental sociolinguistic theory: institutional support is the key to reversing language shift.

It wasn’t enough for parents to simply speak to their children. The language had to be elevated to a subject of academic study, given a writing system, and connected to a “prestige” center (Maykop). Because the residents of Kfar Kama can read Cyrillic, they can access websites, music, and digital content coming out of the North Caucasus today.

From the tragic expulsions of the 19th century to the digital classrooms of the 21st, Adyghe has survived against the odds. It stands as a testament to the idea that a language is more than just grammar and phonemes—it is a homeland you can carry in your mouth, no matter how far you travel.