Khorasani Turkic (, ) is an Oghuz Turkic language spoken in the North Khorasan Province and the Razavi Khorasan Province in

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

. Nearly all Khorasani Turkic speakers are also

bilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

. The closest language of Khorasani Turkic is considered

Turkmen Turkmen, Türkmen, Turkoman, or Turkman may refer to: Peoples Historical ethnonym * Turkoman (ethnonym), ethnonym used for the Oghuz Turks during the Middle Ages Ethnic groups * Turkmen in Anatolia and the Levant (Seljuk and Ottoman-Turkish desc ...

, with which it shares the eastern subbranch of Oghuz languages.

Geographic distribution

Khorasani Turkic is spoken in the Iranian provinces of

North Khorasan North Khorasan Province ( fa, استان خراسان شمالی, ''Ostān-e Khorāsān-e Shomālī'') is a province located in northeastern Iran. Bojnord is the capital of the province. The counties of North Khorasan Province are Shirvan Count ...

near Bojnord and Razavi Khorasan near Sabzevar, Quchan. The Oghuz dialect spoken in Western

Uzbekistan Uzbekistan (, ; uz, Ozbekiston, italic=yes / , ; russian: Узбекистан), officially the Republic of Uzbekistan ( uz, Ozbekiston Respublikasi, italic=yes / ; russian: Республика Узбекистан), is a doubly landlocked cou ...

is sometimes considered a dialect of Khorasani Turkic.

Dialects

Khorasani Turkic is split into North, South and West dialects. The northern dialect is spoken in North Khorasan near Quchan; the southern in Soltanabad, near Sabzevar; the western, around Bojnord.

Classification and related languages

Khorasani Turkic belongs to the Oghuz group of

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languag ...

, which also includes

Turkish Turkish may refer to: *a Turkic language spoken by the Turks * of or about Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities and mi ...

, Azerbaijani, Gagauz, Balkan Gagauz Turkish,

and Salar. Khorasani Turkic was first classified as a separate dialect by Iranian Azerbaijani linguist

Javad Heyat Javad Heyat ( fa, جواد هیئت; 25 May 1925 – 12 August 2014) was an Iranian surgeon and writer. He performed the first open heart surgery in Iran, and was Ayatollah Khamenei's personal physician when the latter was President of Iran in the ...

in the book ''Tārikh-e zabān o lahcayā-ye Türki'' (History of the Turkic dialects). According to some linguists, it should be considered intermediate linguistically between Azerbaijani and

, although it is sufficiently distinct not to be considered a dialect of either. However, it is Turkmen that is considered the closest language to Khorasani Turkic, with which it shares the eastern subbranch of Oghuz languages.

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

The open back vowel is rounded when followed by or : muxabbat ''love'' , insan ''human'' , but yoldaşlık ''friendship'' . It can also be rounded by a following long . This may not happen for all speakers, and plurals never have any rounding.

Morphology

Nouns

Pluralization

Pluralization is marked on nouns with the suffix , which has the two forms and , depending on

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an Assimilation (linguistics), assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is t ...

. Plural is never rounded, even when it follows or .

Case

Nouns in Khorasani Turkic take a number of

case Case or CASE may refer to: Containers * Case (goods), a package of related merchandise * Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component * Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books * Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to c ...

endings that change based on vowel harmony and whether they follow a

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

or a

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...

Possession

Possession is marked with a suffix on the possessed noun.

Pronouns

Khorasani Turkic has six personal pronouns. Occasionally, personal pronouns take different case endings from regular

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...

Verbs

Verbs are declined for tense, aspect, mood, person, and number. The infinitive form of the verb ends in ''-max''.

Examples

;''Excerpt from Tulu (1989) p. 90''

Writing System

Khorasani Turkic is not often written, but it may be with the

Persian alphabet The Persian alphabet ( fa, الفبای فارسی, Alefbâye Fârsi) is a writing system that is a version of the Arabic script used for the Persian language spoken in Iran ( Western Persian) and Afghanistan (Dari Persian) since the 7th cent ...

in the

Perso-Arabic script The Persian alphabet ( fa, الفبای فارسی, Alefbâye Fârsi) is a writing system that is a version of the Arabic script used for the Persian language spoken in Iran ( Western Persian) and Afghanistan (Dari Persian) since the 7th cent ...

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Khorasani Turkic Language Agglutinative languages Oghuz languages Languages of Iran North Khorasan Province Turkic languages