Aimaq or Aimaqi () is the dominant eastern
Persian ethnolect
An ethnolect is generally defined as a language variety that marks speakers as members of ethnic groups who originally used another language or distinctive variety. According to another definition, an ethnolect is any speech variety (language, dia ...
spoken by the
Aimaq people in central northwest
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...
(west of the
Hazarajat
Hazarajat (), also known as Hazaristan () is a mostly mountainous region in the central Afghan highlands, central highlands of Afghanistan, among the Kuh-e Baba mountains in the western extremities of the Hindu Kush. It is the homeland of the H ...
) and eastern
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...
. It is close to the
Dari
Dari (; endonym: ), Dari Persian (, , or , ), or Eastern Persian is the variety of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan. Dari is the Afghan government's official term for the Persian language;Lazard, G.Darī – The New Persian ...
varieties of Persian. The Aimaq people are thought to have a 5–15% literacy rate.
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]
Dialects
Subdialects of Aimaq dialect include:
* Changezi
* Firozkohi
* Jamshidi
* Maliki
* Mizmast
* Taimani
* Timuri
* Zainal
* Zohri (also known as Zuri)
Phonology
Phonetically, as one of the eastern Persian dialects, the Aimaq dialect resembles a formal or classical form of Persian.
Vowels:
* The "majhul" vowels ''ē'' / ''ī'' and ''ō'' / ''ū'' are still kept separate, whereas in western Persian
Iranian Persian (), Western Persian or Western Farsi, natively simply known as Persian (), refers to the varieties of the Persian language spoken in Iran and by others in neighboring countries, as well as by Iranian communities throughout the ...
they are merged as ''ī'' and ''ū'' respectively. For instance, the identically written words شیر 'lion' and 'milk' are in western Persian both pronounced �īr but in Aimaq �ērfor 'lion' and �īrfor 'milk'. The long vowel in زود 'quick' and زور 'strong' is realized as �in western Persian, in contrast, these words are pronounced as ūdand ōrrespectively by Aimaq speakers.
* The diphthongs
A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...
of early Classical Persian ''aw'' (as ''ow'' in Engl. ''cow'') and ''ay'' (as ''i'' in English ''ice'') have in Aimaq become (as in Engl. ''low'') and (as in Engl. ''day''). Dari, on the other hand, is more archaic, e.g. نوروز 'Persian New Year' is realized as in Iranian, and in Aimaq, and نخیر 'no' is uttered as in Iranian, and as in Aimaq.
* The high short vowels and tend to be lowered in western Persian to and
* and are in Aimaq kept separate in word-final positions, unlike western Persian, where has as a word-final allophone.
Consonants:
* Aimaq still retains the (classical) bilabial pronunciation of the labial consonant و, which is realized as a voiced labiodental fricative
The voiced labiodental fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is v.
The sound is similar to v ...
in western Persian. is found in Aimaq as an allophone of ''f'' before voiced consonants.
* The voiced uvular stop (ق) and voiced velar fricative
The voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound that is used in various spoken languages. It is not found in most varieties of Modern English but existed in Old English. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents ...
(غ) are still kept separate in Aimaq. They have coincided in western Persian (probably under the influence of Turkic languages like Azeri and Turkmen).[A. Pisowicz, ''Origins of the New and Middle Persian phonological systems'' (Cracow 1985), p. 112-114, 117.]
See also
* Hazaragi dialect
References
Footnotes
Notations
* Clifton, John M. (ed.) (2005) ''Studies in languages of Tajikistan'' North Eurasia Group, SIL International, St Petersburg, Russia
OCLC 122939499
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Eastern Persian dialects in Afghanistan
Languages of Iran
Languages of Tajikistan