Talysh language

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The Talyshi language is a Northwestern Iranian language spoken in the northern regions of the Iranian provinces of Gilan and Ardabil and the southern regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Historically, the language and its people can be traced through the middle Iranian period back to the ancient Medes. It includes many dialects usually divided into three main clusters: Northern (in Azerbaijan and Iran), Central (Iran) and Southern (Iran). There are a wide variety of estimates for the number of Talyshi speakers with reliable estimates running anywhere from 500,000 to 1 million. Talyshi is partially, but not fully, intelligible with respect to Persian.

[edit] History

The origin of the name Tolish is not clear but is likely quite old. The name of the people emerges in early Arabic sources as Al-Taylasân and in Persian as Tâlišân and Tavâliš which are plural forms of Tâliš. Northern Talysh (in the Republic of Azerbaijan) was historically known as Tâlish-i Guštâsbi. Talysh has always been mentioned with Gilan or Muqan. Hamdallah Mostowfi writing in the 1340s calls the language of Gushtaspi covering the Caspian border region between Gilan to Shirvan is called a Pahlavi language connected to the language of Gilan.^[1] Although there are no confirmed records, the language called in Iranian linguistics as Azari can be the antecedent of both Talyshi and Tati. Miller’s (1953) hypothesis that the Âzari of Ardabil, as appears in the quatrains of Shaikh Safi, was a form of Talishi. That was also confirmed by Henning (1954).^[2][3] In western literature the people and the language are sometimes referred to as Talishi, Taleshi or Tolashi. Generally speaking, the written books and texts concerning Taleshi are rare. However, In the recent decades a scientific and research movement has come about in this old region in poetry, history, literature, etc.

[edit] Geography

In the north of Iran, there are 7 cities that speak Talyshi: Masal, Rezvanshar, Talesh, Fouman, Shaft and Masoleh. However the only city whose people speak exclusively Talyshi is the township of Masal and Masouleh. In other cities, in addition to Talyshi language, people speak Gilaki and Azeri Turkic. In part of the Republic of Azerbaijan, most of the villagers speak Taleshi and people in cities speak Azeri.

Talyshi has been under the influence of Gilaki, Azeri Turkic and Persian. In the south (Taleshdula, Masal, Shanderman and Fumanat) Talyshis and Gilaks live side by side, however there are less evidences that a Talyshi family replace Gilaki with its own language. In this region the relation is more of a contribution to each other's language. In the north of Gilan, on the other hand, Azeri Turkic has replaced Talyshi in cities like Astara after the migration of Turkic speakers to the region since decades ago. However the people around Lavandvil and its mountainous regions has retained the language. From around Lisar up to Hashtpar, Azeri and Talyshi live side by side with the latter mostly spoken in small villages. To the south of Asalem the influence of Azeri is nearly disconnected and the tendency in cities is towards Persian along Talyshi. In Azerbaijan republic, Talyshi is less under the influence of Azeri and Russian than Talyshi in Iran is affected by Persian.^[4]. Central Talishi has been considered the purest of all Talyshi dialects.^[3]

[edit] Classification and related languages

Talyshi belongs to the Northwestern Iranian branch of Indo-European languages. The most related living language to Talyshi is Tati. Tati group of dialects are spoken across the Talysh range in the south-west (Kajal and Shahrud) and south (Tarom)^[3]. That Tatic family should not be mistaken with another Tat family which is more related to Persian. Talyshi also shares many features and structures with Zazaki, now spoken in Turkey and other Caspian languages and Semnani of Iran.

[edit] Dialects

The division of Talyshi into three clusters are based on lexical, phonological and grammatical factors.^[5] Northern Talyshi distinguishes itself from Central and Southern Talyshi not only geographically but culturally and linguistically as well. Speakers of Northern Talysh are found almost exclusively in the Republic of Azerbaijan but can also be found in the neighboring regions of Iran, in the Province of Gilan. The varieties of Talysh spoken in the Republic of Azerbaijan are best described as speech varieties rather than dialects. Four speech varieties are generally identified on the basis of phonetic and lexical differences. These are labeled according to the four major political districts in the Talysh region: Astara, Lankaran, Lerik and Masalli. The differences between the varieties are minimal at the phonetic ^[6] and lexical level ^[7]. Mamedov (1971) suggests a more useful dialectal distinction is one between the varieties spoken in the mountains and those spoken in the plains. The morphosyntax of Northern Talysh is characterized by a complicated split system which is based on the Northwest Iranian type of accusativity/ergativity dichotomy: It shows accusative features with present stem based transitive constructions, whereas past stem based construction tend towards an ergative behavior.^[8]

[edit] Some differences with Northern dialects

The northern dialect has some salient differences with the central and southern dialects, like^[4]:

Alignment variation

The durative marker "ba" in Taleshdulabi changes to "da" in Lankarani and shifts in between the stem and person suffixes:
ba-žē-mun → žē-da-mun

Such a diversification exists in each dialect too, like the case of Masali^[9]

[edit] Phonology

The vowel system in Talyshi is more extended than standard Persian. The prominent differences is the front vowel ü in central and northern dialects and the central vowel ə.^[3]

[edit] vowels

The general phonological differences of some Talyshi dialects with respect to standard Persian is as follows ^[4]:

[edit] Consonants

And some differences with Persian^[4]:

[edit] Grammar

Talyshi has a Subject Object Verb word order. In some situations the case marker, 'i' or 'e' attaches to the accusative noun phrase. There is no definite article, and the indefinite one is "i". The plural is marked by the suffixes "un", "ēn" and also "yēn" for nouns ending with vowels. Unlike oftener cases in Persian, modifiers are preceded by nouns, for example: "maryami kitav" (Mary's book) and "kava daryâ" (livid sea). Like the most other Iranian dialects there are two categories of inflection, subject and object cases. The "present stem" is used for the imperfect and the "past stem" for the present in the verbal system. That differentiantes Taleshi from most other Western Iranian dialects. In the present tense, verbal affixes cause a rearranging of the elements of conjugation in some dialects like Tâlešdulâbi, e.g for expressing the negation of b-a-dašt-im (I sew), "ni" is used in the following form: ni-m-a-dašt (I don't sew)."m" is first person singular marker, "a" denotes duration and "dašt" is the past stem.

[edit] Pronouns

Talyshi is a null-subject, so nominal pronouns (eg. I, he, she) are optional. For first person singular, both "az" and "men" are used. Person suffixes are not added to stems for "men"^[4]. Examples:

• men xanda. (I read.), az bexun-em (Should I read ...)
• men daxun! (Call me!), az-daxun-em (Should I call ...)

[edit] Verbs

• preverbs: â/o, da, vi/i/ē/â, pē/pi
• Negative Markers: ne, nē, ni
• Subjunctive/Imperative prefix: be
• Durative markers: a, ba, da

The follwoing Person Suffixes are used in different dialetcs and for different verbs.^[4]

[edit] Conjugations

The past stem is inflected by removing the infinitive marker (ē), however the present stem and jussive mood are not so simple in many cases and are irregular. For some verbs, present and past stems are identical. The "be" imperative marker is not added situationally.^[10] The following tables show the conjugations for first-person singular of "sew" in some dialects of the the three dialectical categouries^[4]:

There are four "cases" in Talyshi, the nominative (unmarked), the genitive, the (definite) accusative and ergative. The accusative form is often used to express the simple indirect object in addition to the direct object. These "cases" are in origin actually just particles, similar to Persian prepositions like "râ".

[edit] Vocabulary

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Bazin, M., 1974. Le Tâlech et les tâlechi: Ethnic et region dans le nord-ouest de l’Iran, Bulletin de l’Association de Geographes Français, no. 417-418, 161-170.
• Bazin, M., 1979. Recherche des papports entre diversité dialectale et geographie humaine: l’example du Tâleš, G. Schweizer, (ed.), Interdisciplinäre Iran-Forschung: Beiträge aus Kulturgeographie, Ethnologie, Soziologie und Neuerer Geschichte, Wiesbaden, 1-15.
• Bazin, M., 1981. Quelque échantillons des variations dialectales du tâleši, Studia Iranica 10, 111-124, 269-277.
• Yarshater, E., 1996. The Taleshi of Asalem. Studia Iranica, 25, New York.
• Yarshater, E., "Tâlish". Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. 10.

[edit] External links

• TolishRadio
• Ethnologue report for Talysh
• Positive Orientation Towards the Vernacular among the Talysh of Sumgayit
• Example of Talyshi Language