Moghol (or Mogholi;

Dari Dari (, , ), also known as Dari Persian (, ), is the variety of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan. Dari is the term officially recognised and promoted since 1964 by the Afghan government for the Persian language,Lazard, G.Darī ...

: ) is a critically endangered or possibly extinct

Mongolic language The Mongolic languages are a language family spoken by the Mongolic peoples in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, North Asia and East Asia, mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas and in Kalmykia and Buryatia. The best-known member of this language ...

spoken in the province of

Herat Herāt (; Persian: ) is an oasis city and the third-largest city of Afghanistan. In 2020, it had an estimated population of 574,276, and serves as the capital of Herat Province, situated south of the Paropamisus Mountains (''Selseleh-ye Safē ...

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

, in the villages of Kundur and Karez-i-Mulla. The speakers were the

Moghol people The Moghols (also Mogul, Mongul) are Mongolic people as descendants of the Mongol Empire's soldiers in Afghanistan. They live in the Kundur and Karez-i-Mulla villages of Herat province and used to speak the Moghol language. The Moghols sometime ...

, who numbered 2,000 members in the 1970s. They descend from the remnants of Genghis Khan's Mongol army stationed in Afghanistan in the 13th century. In the 1970s, when the German scholar Michael Weiers did fieldwork on the language, few people spoke it, most knew it passively and most were older than 40. It is unknown if there are still speakers of the language.Weiers, Michael. 2003. "Moghol," ''The Mongolic Languages''. Ed. Juha Janhunen. Routledge Language Family Series 5. London: Routledge. Pages 248–264. The language has been strongly influenced by

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 ...

in its phonology, morphology and syntax, causing Weiers to state that it has the appearance of a "true Inner Asian

creole language A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. ...

Script

Historically, the Moghol language was written using a modified version of 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 cen ...

. Extant Moghol literature included Islamic texts, poetry, Mogholi-Persian vocabularies, and Mogholi grammars.

Grammar

Moghol grammar shows substantial influence from Persian languages, having borrowed even word classes not found in other Mongolic languages: the parts of speech are nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, prepositions, adverbs and conjunctions. Nouns are marked for number and case. Verbs are marked for person, number, tense-aspect and mode. Adjectives inflect for the comparative and superlative degree with the Persian suffixes -''tar'' and -''tariin'', but not for number and case.

Phonology

Moghol's phonology is influenced by

. It has a system of six vowel qualities with no length contrast: .

Sample

Weiers noted down the following poem by the Moghol poet Abd Al-Qadir.

Another Moghol poem or song of Abd Al-Qadir written in Arabic alphabet (from Weiers):

Pronouns

The Moghol personal pronouns are: The demonstrative pronouns are: *inah ~ enah ‘this’ *inat ~ enad ‘these’ *mun ~ munah ‘that’ *munat ~ mutah ~ mutat ‘those’ The interrogative pronouns are: *emah ~ imah ~ imas ‘what’ *ken ~ kiyan ‘who’ *kenaiki ‘whose’ *emadu ~ imadu ~ emaji ~ imaji ~ emagalah ‘why’ *emaula- ‘to do what’ *ked ~ keddu ‘how much’ *keja ‘when’ *oshtin ‘how’ The reflexive pronouns are: *orin ‘self’ *orindu-nah ‘for oneself’ *usa-nah ‘self’

Numerals

The Moghol numerals are Janhunen (2003):

Script

Grammar

Phonology

Sample

Pronouns

Numerals

Notes

See also

Further reading