Afshar or Afshari (Azerbaijani: Əfşar) is a Turkic dialect spoken in Iran and Afghanistan by the Afshars. Ethnologue and Glottolog list it as a dialect of the South Azerbaijani language.[2][3] The Encyclopædia Iranica lists it as a separate Southern Oghuz language.[4]
| Afshar | |
|---|---|
| افشر, Əfşar | |
| Native to | Iran, Afghanistan |
| Ethnicity | Afshar people |
Turkic
| |
| Dialects | |
| Perso-Arabic script, Latin script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | (included in South Azerbaijani [azb]) |
| Glottolog | afsh1238 |
According to the third edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam:[5]
Linguistically, Afshārī is classified as a dialect belonging to the South Oghuz group of Turkic languages (southwestern branch of Turkic) (Johanson, History of Turkic, 82–3), or else as a dialect of South Azerbaijani (Azeri). As they were embedded in a Fārsī-speaking environment, however, in many cases Fārsī became the mother tongue of the Afshārs. Other groups became bilingual (as in Kirmān). Additionally, the contact between the different languages seems to have transformed the original dialect (cf. Johanson, Discoveries, 14–6). In 2009 a linguistic comparison of different Afshār groups remains outstanding.
Afshar is distinguished by many loanwords from Persian and a rounding of the phoneme /a/ to [ɒ], as occurred in Uzbek. In many cases, vowels that are rounded in Azerbaijani are not rounded in Afshar. An example of this is /jiz/ (meaning 100), which is /jyz/ in standard Azerbaijani.[6]
According to Lars Johanson, emeritus professor of Turcology and linguistics at the University of Mainz, and Eva Csato, professor emeritus in Turkic languages at Uppsala University, state that the Afshar dialect as SWS; Southwestern South Oghuz group that includes the dialects of Iran (such as Kashkay, Sonqori, Aynallu, etc.) and Afghanistan (e.g., Afshar).[7]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ a b c "Atlas of the Languages of Iran A working classification". Ottawa: Carleton University.
- ^ Azerbaijani, South at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ^ "Glottolog 4.6 - Afshari". Glottolog. Retrieved 1 December 2022.
- ^ Michael Knüppel, E. "TURKIC LANGUAGES OF PERSIA: AN OVERVIEW". Encyclopædia Iranica. Retrieved 2021-03-28.
1.4. Southern-Oghuz. 1.4.1. Afšār. The Afšār language was once spoken in a wide area in western and southwestern Persia from Kermānšāh to the shores of the Persian Gulf.
- ^ Stöber, Georg (2010). "Afshār". In Fleet, Kate; Krämer, Gudrun; Matringe, Denis; Nawas, John; Rowson, Everett (eds.). Encyclopaedia of Islam (3rd ed.). Brill Online. ISSN 1873-9830.
- ^ Robbeets, Martine (24 July 2015). Diachrony of Verb Morphology. De Gruyter Mouton. p. 10.
- ^ Johanson & Csato 2024, p. 82.
Literature
edit- Doerfer, Gerhard; Hesche, Wolfram (1989). Südoghusische Materialen aus Afghanistan und Iran. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN 3-447-02786-X.
- Johanson, Lars; Csato, Eva, eds. (2024). The Turkic Languages (2nd ed.). Routledge.