Lessons
A short course in reading and building sentences — each lesson is a few minutes, and each ends with a self-test you click to reveal.
Where to start
Three questions, about half a minute. Nothing is graded and no answer leaves this browser. All they decide is which page opens first.
Or skip them: with no answer the course starts at Reading Karachay, and the whole list is further down. Nothing here is locked, before or after.
Answer all three and the next step appears here.
You answered these already.
Start at the beginning, then.
The course opens on the sounds and the two spellings, and assumes nothing before it.
One honest note about what just happened: that was three questions. It says nothing about how much of the language is already in your ear — most of what people know does not survive a question with two answers.
Since you know your way around the endings: every word in the dictionary prints its full set of forms, and you can read those in any order alongside the lessons. Open the dictionary.
The writing first, then straight on to the nouns.
You follow the language already, so the early lessons would spend their time on things you can hear. What is missing is the writing. Karachay is not taught in schools outside the republic, and almost nobody who grew up hearing it was ever shown the alphabet.
So: Reading Karachay first, which is only the letters and the sounds. After that skip the middle of the course and pick it up at Unit 2 — where it is, whose it is — which starts at The six shapes of a noun. The lessons in between stay where they are if you want them.
The site is now showing Cyrillic, since that is the spelling this route is teaching you to read.
The alphabet is done, so that part gets skimmed.
You read the letters, which is the slowest thing to acquire and the one thing the first lesson is mostly about. Read it anyway if you like — Karachay uses a handful of them differently from Russian, and that handful is the whole of Reading Karachay.
Otherwise start at Sentences with no verb and work forward.
The site is now showing Cyrillic, since you read it.
Start: Sentences with no verb or skim Reading Karachay first
Partway in, then, rather than at either end.
Two of the three answers say the opening lessons would be telling you things you have. The third says the course still has something to give you, and where it gives most is Unit 2 — where it is, whose it is — which starts at The six shapes of a noun.
If that page turns out to assume something you have not met, the list below runs in order and you can drop back a lesson at a time.
The site is now showing Cyrillic, since you read it.
Tables, then, rather than a course.
All three answers point the same way: the lessons would mostly be telling you things you already do.
The part of this site built for that is the dictionary — 8,941 words, and every page prints the whole paradigm from the engine rather than from a table somebody typed out. Where the engine is not sure, the page says so.
There is no single grammar index yet. The tables live on the word pages, one word at a time, and the word banks are the closest thing to a contents page until there is one.
Coming from Turkish, Kazakh or Tatar? Start with what Karachay doesn't have — four endings you will reach for that are not here.
The site is now showing Cyrillic.
The course
- 1
Reading Karachay
The two scripts, the handful of new sounds, and why vowels travel in packs.
- 2
Pronouns and the simple past
Six pronouns, six endings — and your first real sentences.
- 3
The present
One tense does the work of two: "I go" and "I'm going".
- 4
The two futures
Two ways to talk about later — a loose promise and a firm plan.
- 5
Saying no
One small syllable turns any verb negative — plus the word for "is not".
- 6
Asking questions
One more small syllable turns any statement into a question — the art is knowing where it goes.
- 7
The little past helper
One tiny helper gives you was-doing, had-done, would, and would-have — the main verb never changes.
- 8
The two pasts
One says a thing happened. The other says it has happened — and that its result is still standing.
- 9
If, would, and would have
Every kind of "if" gets its own form — and one ending decides whether you missed a trip or never knew about it.
- 10
Can, can't, must
Ability with a helper verb hiding inside the word, and necessity that never conjugates the verb at all.
- 11
The six shapes of a noun
Where English reaches for little words like to, at, and from, the noun itself changes shape.
- 12
Whose it is
My, your, and our live inside the word — six endings that every noun can wear.
- 13
Words that grow
Number, owner, and direction stack onto one word, in one fixed order — a whole phrase in a single word.
- 14
Describing things
Adjectives never change before a noun, compare with a from-form, and can carry the to-be endings themselves.
- 15
Joining two actions
One ending turns a verb into a companion for the next one — and that is how Karachay says "bring", "until" and "as soon as".
- 16
How an action unfolds
Not when something happened but how it went — right in the middle of it, or over and over for years.
- 17
What Karachay doesn't have
Four endings every neighbouring language has and this one doesn't — and what it says instead.
- 18
Making new words
Four endings that don't change a word's shape but replace it — with, without, -ness, and the person who does it for a living.
- 19
Sentences with no verb
Six endings that turn a noun into a whole sentence — and not a verb in sight.
- 20
What you are saying about it comes last
Karachay puts the point at the end, and the describing word in front. Two rules, four hundred words.
- 21
Pointing and naming
This, that, here, there — and asking what a thing is or who someone is.
- 22
Saying no
One little word, tul or tuyul, and the ending moves onto it.
- 23
Asking
A syllable inside the word turns it into a question — unless a question word has done the job already.
- 24
Describing things
Big, bigger, very big, biggest — and how to say it about someone.