Sangsari or Sangisari is an
Iranian language
The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau.
The Iranian languages are grouped ...
spoken mainly in the
Semnan and
Tehran
Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most popul ...
provinces of
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 ...
, especially in the
Sangesar (Mahdi Shehr) town and in several surrounding villages. Sangsari is included in the
Semnani group of
Northwestern Iranian languages
The Western Iranic languages are a branch of the Iranic languages, attested from the time of Old Persian (6th century BC) and Median language, Median.
Languages
The traditional Northwestern branch is a convention for non-Southwestern languages, ...
that also includes
Lasgerdi,
Semnani, and
Sorkhei. There are around 50,000 Sangsari speakers.
Glottolog
''Glottolog'' is a bibliographic database of the world's lesser-known languages, developed and maintained first at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany (between 2015 and 2020 at the Max Planck Institute for ...
classifies Sangsari under "Komisenian" language family. This designation is also adopted by
Wiktionary
Wiktionary ( , , rhyming with "dictionary") is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary of terms (including words, phrases, proverbs, linguistic reconstructions, etc.) in all natural languages and in a number ...
.
Phonology
The
vowels
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 ...
of Sangsari are /a, a:, e, e:, i, o, ö, u, u:/. The
consonants
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 ...
are the same as in
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 ...
.
Pronouns
Sangseri distinguishes two numbers in pronouns—singular and plural—and marks two cases in the singular—the direct (nominative) and the oblique (other cases). Masculine and feminine forms are distinct in the singular third person pronouns.
[Lecoq, pg. 309.]
Notes
References
Pierre Lecoq. 1989. "Les dialectes caspiens et les dialectes du nord-ouest de l'Iran," ''Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum''. Ed. Rüdiger Schmitt. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag. Pages 296–314.
Northwestern Iranian languages
{{Iran-stub