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'Zan language' or 'Zanuri' is a conventional term used by some linguists to describe the unity of Mingrelian and Laz, which are the only two mutually intelligible South Caucasian or Kartvelian languages, and which are sometimes considered as the two distinct dialects of Zan. The Georgian linguist Akaki Shanidze favored the term 'Colchian' to refer to the Zan language. The term ''Zan'' comes from the Graeco-Roman name of one of the chief Colchian tribes, which is almost identical to the Svan (a northwestern Kartvelian group) designation for the Mingrelians.
Zan had separated from the proto-Kartvelian language by the eighth century BC, and it was then spoken by an uninterrupted community along the Black Sea coast of ancient Colchis, from modern day Trabzon, Turkey, into western Georgia, until the arrival of their Georgian-speaking kinsmen in the flight from the Arabs, who appeared in Iberia (eastern Georgia) in the mid-seventh century AD, split them by creating the Georgian-speaking regions of Imereti, Guria, and Adjara.
Since the process of differentiation into Mingrelian and Laz had basically been completed by early modern times, it is not customary to speak of a unified Zan language today. Now, Laz and Mingrelian are geographically isolated, the former spoken by the Laz people in Turkey and a small portion of Adjara, southwestern Georgia, and the latter by the Mingrelian group, primarily in Mingrelia and Abkhazia.

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References

★ Amerijibi-Mullen, Rusudan (ed., 2006), ''K’olxuri (megrul-lazuri) ena: Colchian (Megrelian-Laz) language''. ICGL (Universali: Tbilisi, Georgia), www.icgl.org. (see also the review of this book by Andrew Higgins.)

★ Jost Gippert/Irakli Dzocenidze/Svetlana Ahlborn, The Zan language. ''Armazi Project: Georgian Academy of Sciences (Chikobava Institute of Linguistics)''.