The Talysh language (زبان تالشی, Tolışə Zıvon, Tолышә зывон),
is a
Northwestern Iranian language
The Western Iranic languages are a branch of the Iranic languages, attested from the time of Old Persian (6th century BC) and Median.
Languages
The traditional Northwestern branch is a convention for non-Southwestern languages, rather than a g ...
spoken in the northern regions of the
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 ...
ian provinces of
Gilan and
Ardabil
Ardabil (, fa, اردبیل, Ardabīl or ''Ardebīl'') is a city in northwestern Iran, and the capital of Ardabil Province. As of the 2022 census, Ardabil's population was 588,000. The dominant majority in the city are ethnic Iranian Azerbaija ...
and the southern regions of the Republic of
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of th ...
by around 500,000-800,000 people. Talysh language is closely related to the
Tati language. It includes many dialects usually divided into three main clusters: Northern (in Azerbaijan and Iran), Central (Iran) and Southern (Iran). Talysh is partially, but not fully, intelligible with
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 ...
. Talysh is classified as "vulnerable" by
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
's
Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
The UNESCO ''Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger'' is an online publication containing a comprehensive list of the world's endangered languages. It originally replaced the ''Red Book of Endangered Languages'' as a title in print after a ...
.
History
The origin of the name Talysh is not clear but is likely to be quite old. The name of the people appears 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. Writing in the 1330s AP, Hamdallah Mostowfi calls the language of Gushtaspi (covering the Caspian border region between Gilan to
Shirvan
Shirvan (from fa, شروان, translit=Shirvān; az, Şirvan; Tat: ''Şirvan''), also spelled as Sharvān, Shirwan, Shervan, Sherwan and Šervān, is a historical Iranian region in the eastern Caucasus, known by this name in both pre-Islam ...
) a
Pahlavi language
Middle Persian or Pahlavi, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg () in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Per ...
connected to the language of Gilan. Although there are no confirmed records, the language called in Iranian linguistics as
Azari can be the antecedent of both Talysh and
Tati. Miller's (1953) hypothesis that the Âzari of
Ardabil
Ardabil (, fa, اردبیل, Ardabīl or ''Ardebīl'') is a city in northwestern Iran, and the capital of Ardabil Province. As of the 2022 census, Ardabil's population was 588,000. The dominant majority in the city are ethnic Iranian Azerbaija ...
, as appears in the quatrains of
Shaikh Safi, was a form of Talysh was confirmed by Henning (1954).
[Asatrian, G. and H. Borjian, 2005. Talish: people and language: The state of research. ''Iran and the Caucasus'' 9/1, p 43-72] In western literature the people and the language are sometimes referred to as Talishi, Taleshi or Tolashi. Generally speaking, written documents about Taleshi are rare.
The first information about the Talysh language in Russian can be found in Volume X of Strachevsky's "Encyclopedic Dictionary" ("Справочный энциклопедический словарь"), published in St. Petersburg in 1848. The work says:
"The Talysh dialect is one of the six main dialects of Persian. It is used in the Talysh khanate and is probably the homeland of that language. Due to its grammatical and lexicographic forms, this language is noticeably different from other dialects. Except for the addition of the plural suffix "un", it is peculiar and is not derived from any Pahlavi or any other language. This language puts all relative pronouns before the noun, and the pronouns themselves are original in it.
The second information about the Talysh language is provided by Ilya Berezin, a professor at Kazan University, in Russian, but not in Russian, but in French. In 1853, Berezin's book on Persian grammar was published in Kazan. In the same year, his book "Recherches sur les dialectes persans" was published in Kazan. Experts still refer to this work as the first work of Russian Iranians in the field of Iranian dialectology. He used the "Talysh" songs given in A. Khodzko's work. IN Berezin's work consists of two parts - a grammatical essay and songs from A. Khodzko's work. IN Berezin writes that he conducted his research on Iranian dialects on the basis of materials he personally collected and studied, but does not write anywhere with whom, when and in what area he collected them. In the work, Talysh words are distorted. IN Berezin writes about the quartets taken from the work of A. Khodzko:
"Here I present to the reader a new translation of the Talysh, Gilan and Mazandaran songs and accompany them with critical notes; the Talysh texts, if not in Khodzko, were restored by me on the basis of his transcription." However, the author writes that "grammatical rules are not strictly observed in the Talysh language, as the verb's news form is usually confused almost all the time, ie instead of the aorist preterit, the future time in the present tense, etc. is used. " Going even further, he writes: "In the Talysh language, the verb is the most difficult, the most confusing and the most dubious part."
Geography
In the north of Iran, there are six cities where Talysh is spoken:
Masal
Masal ( fa, ماسال, also romanized as Māsāl; also known as Bāzār-e Māsāl, Masal-Bazar, Sar-i-Bāzar, and Sārī Bāzār Mūsār) is a city and capital of Masal County, Gilan Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 10,992, ...
,
Rezvanshar,
Talesh,
Fuman
Fuman (; ; died 1542) was Chieftain of the Jianzhou Jurchens and an ancestor of the future Qing dynasty emperors. His father was Sibeoci Fiyanggū. His family name was Aisin Gioro (愛新覺羅).
History
Fuman was the great-grandfather of Nurh ...
,
Shaft, and
Masuleh (in these cities some people speak
Gilaki and Turkish as well). The only towns where Talysh is spoken exclusively are the townships of Masal and Masuleh. In other cities, in addition to Talysh, people speak
Gilaki and
Azerbaijani. In Azerbaijan there are eight cities where Talysh is spoken:
Astara (98%),
Lerik (90%),
Lenkoran
Lankaran ( az, Lənkəran, ) is a city in Azerbaijan, on the coast of the Caspian Sea, near the southern border with Iran. As of 2021, the city had a population of 89,300. It is next to, but independent of, Lankaran District. The city forms a dis ...
(90%),
Masalli (36%).
Talysh has been under the influence of
Gilaki, Azeri Turkic, and Persian. In the south (Taleshdula, Masal, Shanderman, and Fumanat) the Talysh and
Gilaks live side by side; however, there is less evidence that a Talysh family replaces 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 Talysh in cities like
Astara after the migration of Turkic speakers to the region decades ago. However, the people around Lavandvil and its mountainous regions have retained Talysh. Behzad Behzadi, the author of "Azerbaijani Persian Dictionary" remarks that: "The inhabitants of Astara are Talyshis and in fifty years ago (about 1953) that I remember the elders of our family spoke in that language and the great majority of dwellers also conversed in Talyshi. In the surrounding villages, a few were familiar with Turkic". From around
Lisar
Lisar ( fa, ليسار, also Romanized as Līsār and Lissar; also known as Līssār Bāzār) is a city and capital of Kargan Rud District, in Talesh County, Gilan Province, Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, an ...
up to
Hashtpar
Hashtpar ( fa, هشتپر, also known as, Hashpar, Hashtpar-e Tavalesh, and Tālesh) is a city and capital of Talesh County, Gilan Province, Iran. At the 2016 census, its population was 54,178, in 15,688 families.
The Iranian dialect of Hashtpar ...
, Azeri and Talysh live side by side, with the latter mostly spoken in small villages. To the south of
Asalem
Asalem ( fa, اسالم, also Romanized as Asālem) is a city and capital of Asalem District, in Talesh County, Gilan Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 3,347, in 827 families.
Asalemi dialect is a variety of Talysh language, ...
, the influence of Azeri is negligible and the tendency is towards Persian along with Talysh in cities. In the Azerbaijan republic, Talysh is less under the influence of Azeri and
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
than Talysh in Iran is affected by Persian.
[Abdoli, A. 1380 AP / 2001 AD. Farhange Tatbiqiye Tâleši-Tâti-Âzari (Comparative dictionary of Talyshi-Tati-Azari), p 31-35, Publication:Tehran, "šerkate Sahâmiye Entešâr" .] Central Talysh has been considered the purest of all Talysh dialects.
Classification and related languages
Talysh belongs to the Northwestern Iranian branch of
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
. The living language most closely related to Talysh is
Tati. The Tati group of dialects is spoken across the Talysh range in the southwest (Kajal and Shahrud) and south (Tarom).
This Tatic family should not be confused with another
Tat family which is more related to Persian. Talysh also shares many features and structures with
Zazaki
Zaza or Zazaki (), is an Iranian language spoken primarily in eastern Turkey by the Zazas. The language is a part of the Zaza–Gorani language group of the northwestern group of the Iranian branch. The glossonym Zaza originated as a pejorativ ...
, now spoken in
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...
, and the
Caspian languages
The Caspian languages are a branch of Northwestern Iranian languages spoken in northern Iran and south-eastern Azerbaijan, south of the Caspian Sea. They are unique in that they share certain typological features with South Caucasian langua ...
and
Semnani of Iran.
Dialects
![Map of Caspian Languages in Iran and Azerbaijan](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Map_of_Caspian_Languages_in_Iran_and_Azerbaijan.png)
The division of Talysh into three clusters is based on lexical, phonological and grammatical factors. Northern Talysh distinguishes itself from Central and Southern Talysh 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 neighbouring 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
Lankaran ( az, Lənkəran, ) is a city in Azerbaijan, on the coast of the Caspian Sea, near the southern border with Iran. As of 2021, the city had a population of 89,300. It is next to, but independent of, Lankaran District. The city forms a dis ...
,
Lerik, and
Masalli. The differences between the varieties are minimal at the phonetic and lexical level.
[Pirejko, L. A., 1976. Talyšsko-russkij slovar (Talyshi-Russian Dictionary), Moscow.] 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 constructions tend towards an ergative behavior. In distant regions like
Lavandevil
Lavandevil ( fa, لوندويل, also Romanized as Lavandevīl, Lavandavil, and Lavandvīl; also known as Bāzar-e Lavandvīl, Landvīl-e Sabalī, and Lavandvīl-e Sabalī) is a city and capital of Lavandevil District, located in Astara County of ...
and
Masuleh, the dialects differ to such a degree that conversations begin to be difficult.
In Iran, the northern dialect is in danger of
extinction
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
.
Some Northern dialects' differences
The northern dialect has some salient differences from the central and southern dialects, e.g.:
Alignment variation
The durative marker "ba" in Taleshdulaei 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, as in the case of Masali
Phonology
The following is the Northern Talysh dialect:
Consonants
Vowels
* only occurs in free variation with , whereas is often palatalized as .
* are heard as allophones of .
* Vowel sounds followed by a nasal consonant, /_nC/, often tend to be nasalized.
Scripts
The vowel system in Talysh is more extended than in standard Persian. The prominent differences are the front vowel ü in central and northern dialects and the central vowel ə.
In 1929, a Latin-based alphabet was created for Talysh in the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
. However, in 1938 it was changed to
Cyrillic-based, but it did not gain extensive usage for a variety of reasons, including political
Stalinist
Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory o ...
consolidation of
socialist nations. An orthography based on
Azeri Latin is used in Azerbaijan,
and also in Iranian sources, for example on the
IRIB
The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB; fa, صدا و سيمای جمهوری اسلامی ايران, ''Sedā va Sīmā-ye Jomhūri-ye Eslāmi-ye Īrān'', , formerly called National Iranian Radio and Television until the Iranian rev ...
's ParsToday website. 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 ...
is also used in Iran, although publications in the language are rare and are mostly volumes of poetry. The following tables contain the vowels and consonants used in Talysh. The sounds of the letters on every row, pronounced in each language, may not correspond fully.
Monophthongs
Diphthongs
Consonants
Differences from Persian
The general phonological differences of some Talysh dialects with respect to standard Persian are as follows:
Grammar
Talysh has a
subject–object–verb
Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to:
Philosophy
*'' Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing
**Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective con ...
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. In contrast to Persian, modifiers are preceded by nouns, for example: "maryami kitav" (Mary's book) and "kava daryâ" (livid sea). Like most other Iranian dialects there are two categories of inflexion, subject and object cases. The "present stem" is used for the imperfect and the "past stem" for the present in the verbal system. That differentiates Talysh 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.
Pronouns
Talysh is a
null-subject language
In linguistic typology, a null-subject language is a language whose grammar permits an independent clause to lack an explicit subject; such a clause is then said to have a null subject.
In the principles and parameters framework, the null subj ...
, so nominal pronouns (e.g. I, he, she) are optional. For
first person singular
Singular may refer to:
* Singular, the grammatical number that denotes a unit quantity, as opposed to the plural and other forms
* Singular homology
* SINGULAR, an open source Computer Algebra System (CAS)
* Singular or sounder, a group of boar, ...
, both "az" and "men" are used. Person suffixes are not added to stems for "men".
Examples:
*men xanda. (I read.), az bexun-em (Should I read ...)
*men daxun! (Call me!), az-daxun-em (Should I call ...)
There are three prefixes in Talysh and Tati added to normal forms making possessive pronouns. They are: "če / ča" and "eš / še".
Verbs
*
preverb
Although not widely accepted in linguistics, the term preverb is used in Caucasian (including all three families: Northwest Caucasian, Northeast Caucasian and Kartvelian), Caddoan, Athabaskan, and Algonquian linguistics to describe certain elem ...
s: â/o, da, vi/i/ē/â, pē/pi
* Negative Markers: ne, nē, ni
* Subjunctive/Imperative prefix: be
* Durative markers: a, ba, da
The following Person Suffixes are used in different dialects and for different verbs.
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.
[Masali, K. 1386 AP / 2007 AD. Sâxte fe'l dar zabâne Tâleši (Guyeše Mâsâl) (Conjugations in Talyshi language (Masali dialect)). ] The following tables show the conjugations for first-person singular of "sew" in some dialects of the three dialectical categories:
= Stems and imperative mood
=
= Active voice
=
= Passive voice
=
Nouns and adpositions
There are four "cases" in Talysh, the nominative (unmarked), the genitive, the (definite) accusative and ergative.
The nominative case (characterized by null morpheme on nouns) encodes the subject; the predicate; the indefinite direct object in a nominative clause; definite direct object in an ergative clause; the vowel-final main noun in a noun phrase with another noun modifying it; and, finally, the nominal element in an adpositional phrases with certain adpositions. The examples below are from Pirejko 1976
PRST:present stem
REFL:reflexive pronoun
The ergative case, on the other hand, has the following functions: indicating the subject of an ergative phrase; definite direct object (in this function, ergative case takes the form of -ni after vowel-final stems); nominal modifier in a noun phrase; the nominal element in adpositional phrases with most adpositions.
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".
Vocabulary
References
Further reading
*Abdoli, A., 1380
AP / 2001
AD. Tat and Talysh literature (Iran and Azerbaijan republic).
Entešâr Publication', Tehran, .
*Asatrian, G., and Habib Borjian, 2005. Talish: people and language: The state of research. ''Iran and the Caucasus'' 9/1, pp. 43–72 (published by Brill).
*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.
*Paul, D., 2011. A comparative dialectal description of Iranian Taleshi. PhD Dissertation: University of Manchester. https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/uk-ac-man-scw:119653
*Yarshater, E., 1996. The Taleshi of Asalem. ''Studia Iranica'', 25, New York.
*Yarshater, E., "Tâlish". ''Encyclopaedia of Islam'', 2nd ed., vol. 10.
External links
Positive Orientation Towards the Vernacular among the Talysh of SumgayitExample of Talyshi Language
*
ttp://taleshan.com/adabiyat.htm A short note on the history of Talyshi literature
{{Authority control
Talysh
Northwestern Iranian languages
Languages of Iran
Languages of Azerbaijan
Caspian languages