Khalaj language

Khalaj is a Turkic language spoken in Iran. Although it contains many old Turkic elements, it has become widely Persianized.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Khalaj has about 150 words of uncertain origin.Template:Sfn

Surveys have found that most young Khalaj parents do not pass the language on to their children; only 5% of families teach their children the language.

The Khalaj language is a descendant of an old Turkic language called Arghu.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The 11th-century Turkic lexicographer Mahmud al-Kashgari was the first person to give written examples of the Khalaj language, which are mostly interchangeable with modern Khalaj.Template:Sfn

Gerhard Doerfer, who first scientifically described Khalaj, demonstrated that it was an independent branch from Common Turkic.Template:Sfn

Classification

The Turkic languages are a language family of at least 35 documented languages spoken by the Turkic peoples.Template:Sfn

While initially thought to be closely related to Azerbaijani, linguistic studies, particularly those done by Gerhard Doerfer, led to the reclassification of Khalaj as a distinct non-Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family.Template:Sfn Evidence for the reassignment includes the preservation of the vowel length contrasts found in Proto-Turkic (PT),Template:Sfn word-initial *h, and the lack of the sound change *d > y characteristic of Oghuz languages.Template:Sfn

The conservative character of Khalaj can be seen by comparing the same words across different Turkic varieties. For example, in Khalaj, the word for 'foot' is hadaq, while the cognate word in nearby Oghuz languages is ayaq (compare Turkish ). Because of the preservation of these archaic features, some scholars have speculated that the Khalaj people are the descendants of the Arghu Turks.Template:Sfn

Ethnologue and ISO formerly listed a Northwestern Iranian language named "Khalaj" with the same population figure as the Turkic language. The Khalaj speak their Turkic language and Persian, and the supposed Iranian language of the Khalaj is spurious.

Geographical distribution

Khalaj is spoken mainly in Markazi Province in Iran distributed throughout a number of villages from Qom to Ashtian and Tafresh.Template:Sfn Doerfer cites the number of speakers as approximately 17,000 in 1968, and 20,000 in 1978.Template:Sfn Ethnologue reports that the population of speakers grew to 42,107 by 2000; however, in 2018 Khalaj poet and researcher Ali Asghar Jamrasi estimated the number of speakers to be 19,000.

Dialects

The main dialects of Khalaj are Northern and Southern. Within the dialect groupings, individual villages and groupings of speakers have distinct speech patterns.

The linguistic difference between the most distant dialects is not smaller (or even bigger) than Kazan Tatar and Bashkir or between Rumelian Turkish and Azerbaijani.Template:Sfn

Phonology

Consonants

Consonant phonemesTemplate:Sfn

		Labial	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal		Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink
Stop/ Affricate	voiceless	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	ç [[[:Template:IPAlink]]]	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
	voiced	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	c [[[:Template:IPAlink]]]	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
Fricative	voiceless	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	ş [[[:Template:IPAlink]]]	Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink
	voiced	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	ğ [[[:Template:IPAlink]]]
Approximant			Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink
Rhotic			Template:IPAlink

Vowels

Vowel phonemesTemplate:Sfn

	Front		Back
	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
Close	i Template:IPAblink í Template:IPAblink	ü Template:IPAblink ű Template:IPAblink	ı Template:IPAblink ì Template:IPAblink	u Template:IPAblink ú Template:IPAblink
Mid	e Template:IPAblink é Template:IPAblink	ö Template:IPAblink ő Template:IPAblink		o Template:IPAblink ó Template:IPAblink
Open	ə Template:IPAblink ə́ Template:IPAblink		a Template:IPAblink á Template:IPAblink

Doerfer claims that Khalaj retains three vowel lengths postulated for Proto-Turkic: long (e.g. qán 'blood'), half-long (e.g. bàş 'head') and short (e.g. hat 'horse').Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn However, Alexis Manaster Ramer challenges both the interpretation that Khalaj features three vowel lengths and that Proto-Turkic had the same three-way contrast.Template:Sfn Some vowels of Proto-Turkic are realized as falling diphthongs, as in 'arm'.

Grammar

Morphology

Nouns

Nouns in Khalaj might receive a plural marker or possessive marker. Cases in Khalaj include genitive, accusative, dative, locative, ablative, instrumental, and equative.

Forms of case suffixes change based on vowel harmony and the consonants they follow. Case endings also interact with possessive suffixes. A table of basic case endings is provided below:

Case	Suffix
Nominative	∅ (unmarked)
Genitive	-Un, -u:y, -i:, -i:n
Dative	-A, -KA
Accusative	-I, -NI
Locative	-čA
Ablative	-dA
Instrumental	-lAn, -lA, -nA
Equative	-vāra

The equative can also be expressed by the words täkin, täki and other forms.

Verbs

Verbs in Khalaj are inflected for voice, tense, aspect, and negation. Verbs consist of long strings of morphemes in the following array:

Stem + Voice + Negation + Tense/Aspect + Agreement

Due to Persian influence, Khalaj has, like Qashqai, lost converb constructions of the form -Ib/-Ip.

Syntax

Khalaj employs subject–object–verb word order. Adjectives precede nouns.

Vocabulary

The core of Khalaj vocabulary is Turkic, but many words have been borrowed from Persian. Words from neighboring Turkic languages (namely Azerbaijani), have also made their way into Khalaj.

For example, Khalaj numbers are Turkic in form, but some speakers replace the forms for "80" and "90" with Persian terms.

Examples

Excerpt from Doerfer & Tezcan 1994, transliterated by Doerfer:Template:Sfn

Translation	IPA	In Latin alphabet	In Arabic script
Once, Mullah Nasreddin had a son.		Bí kiní mollá nasrəddínín oğlu vár-arti.
He said, "Oh Father, I want a wife."		Haüdı ki "Əy bába, məñ kişi şəyyorum."
He said, "My dear, we have a cow; take this cow and sell it. Come with the proceeds, we shall buy you a wife!"		Haüdı ki "Bába bizüm bí sığırımüz vár, yetip bo sığırı sátı. Nağd şəyi púlín, yək biz sə̃ kişi alduq!"

A piece of folk poetry by Abdullah Vasheqani, transcribed in the Common Turkic alphabet and translated into English by Hasan Güzel:Template:Sfn

Khalaj

Vaşqan baluqum xeleç teq var tilim
canumda yiter baluqum o tilim
til o baluqumu dunyalan teyişmem
Vaşqan turpaqum o xeleç teq tilim

English

Vasheqan my village, Khalaj my language
Better than my life, my language and village
I wouldn’t change my language and village for the world
Vasheqan is my land, and Khalaj is my language

Sources

• Template:Encyclopædia Iranica Online

Further reading

• Bulut, Christiane. "The Turkic varieties of Iran". In: The Languages and Linguistics of Western Asia: An Areal Perspective. Edited by Geoffrey Haig and Geoffrey Khan. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2019. pp. 398–444. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110421682-013
• Accessed 3 Jan. 2023.

External links

• Resources in and about the Turkic Khalaj language
• Khalaj language