If one person has come to symbolise the modern effort to save Lazuri, it is Ismail Avci Bucaklisi. A linguist from Pazar (Rize) and president of the Laz Institute, he has spent more than two decades turning a spoken language into one that can be written, taught and studied. The summary below draws on his public interviews and writings.

Building the tools of a language

Bucaklisi co-authored the first Laz-Turkish dictionary and, with the Japanese linguist Goichi Kojima, the first full Laz grammar. He also prepared and presented some of the earliest radio programmes in Laz, helping the language reach a public audience for the first time.

His message

In his interviews Bucaklisi returns again and again to the same point: that Lazuri is endangered, with perhaps a quarter of a million speakers left, and that decades of assimilation pushed the language out of public life and kept it from being written. The remedy, he argues, is collective effort. Families speaking Laz at home, communities asking for it in schools, and young people taking pride in the language rather than hiding it.

Under his coordination the Laz Institute has prepared official school materials, run language workshops, declared 7 November as Laz Language Day, and launched Lazuri TV to carry Laz stories, songs and lessons onto digital platforms.

Watch and read

Hear him in his own words: “Ismail Avci Bucaklisi ile Lazca Uzerine” (video interview, in Turkish) and this Laz Language Day interview on Medyascope.

Photo: Laz language instructors, via Medyascope.