The Sarikoli language (also Sariqoli, Selekur, Sarikul, Sariqul, Sariköli) is a member of the Pamir subgroup of the Southeastern Iranian languages spoken by Tajiks in China. It is officially referred to in China as the "Tajik language", although it is different from the related Iranian language spoken in

Tajikistan Tajikistan (, ; tg, Тоҷикистон, Tojikiston; russian: Таджикистан, Tadzhikistan), officially the Republic of Tajikistan ( tg, Ҷумҳурии Тоҷикистон, Jumhurii Tojikiston), is a landlocked country in Centr ...

, which is considered a dialect of Persian.

Nomenclature

Sarikoli is officially referred to as "Tajik" ( zh, 塔吉克语, ''Tǎjíkèyǔ'') in China. However, it is not closely related to

Tajik Tajik, Tadjik, Tadzhik or Tajikistani may refer to: * Someone or something related to Tajikistan * Tajiks, an ethnic group in Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan * Tajik language, the official language of Tajikistan * Tajik (surname) * Tajik cu ...

(a form of Persian) as spoken in

because Sarikoli is an Eastern Iranian language, closely related to other

Pamir languages The Pamir languages are an areal group of the Eastern Iranian languages, spoken by numerous people in the Pamir Mountains, primarily along the Panj River and its tributaries. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Pamir language family wa ...

largely spoken in the Badakshan regions of Tajikistan and

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 bord ...

, whereas the Western Iranian Farsi-Dari-Tajik is a polycentric language of a related but distinctly and historically different type. Both of these types of language and dialect clusters have been geographically separated by great distances and mountainous terrain over the course of long periods of time during which many differences of pronunciation, wording and xenolinguistic borrowings or retention of older forms or word choices accumulated over time. It is also referred to as Tashkorghani, after the ancient capital of the Sarikoli kingdom -- now the Tashkurgan (or Taxkorgan) Tajik Autonomous County in Xinjiang, China. However, the usage of the term Tashkorghani is not widespread among scholars. The earliest written accounts in English are from the 1870s which generally use the name "Sarikoli" to refer to the language, but some written accounts since that time may use a different pronunciation derived from transcribing Chinese phonetics of the term into English as "Selekur(i)". Modern Chinese researchers often mention Sarikoli and Tajik names in their papers.

Distribution of speakers

The number of speakers is around 35,000; most reside in the Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County in Southern Xinjiang Province, China. The Chinese name for the Sarikoli language, as well as the usage of Sarikol as a

toponym Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' ( proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name o ...

, is Sàléikuòlèyǔ (). Speakers in China typically use Chinese and Uyghur to communicate with people of other

ethnic groups An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history ...

in the area. The rest are found in the Pakistani-controlled sector of Kashmir, closely touching the Pakistan-Chinese international borders.

Writing system

The language has no official written form. Linguist Gāo Èrqiāng, publishing in China, used

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioner ...

to transcribe the sounds of Sarikoli in his book and dictionary, while Tatiana N. Pakhalina, publishing in Russia, used an alphabet similar to that of the

Wakhi language Wakhi (Wakhi: /В̌aхi, ) is an Indo-European language in the Eastern Iranian branch of the language family spoken today in Wakhan District, Northern Afghanistan and also in Tajikistan, Northern Pakistan and China. Classification and distri ...

in hers. The majority of Sarikoli-speakers attend schools using Uyghur as the

medium of instruction A medium of instruction (plural: media of instruction, or mediums of instruction) is a language used in teaching. It may or may not be the official language of the country or territory. If the first language of students is different from the offic ...

In academia

In 1958, linguist Gāo Èrqiāng studied Sarikoli in collaboration with Tajik linguists, using 37 symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet for the transcription of the language. In the 1996 Sarikoli–Han dictionary, Gāo Èrqiāng uses an alphabet of 26 letters and 8 digraphs based on

Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...

Uyghur Alphabet

In recent years, Sarikoli speakers in China have used Uyghur Arabic alphabet to spell out their language.

Phonology

Vowels

*// may also be heard as Sarikoli vowels as used in Russian works (IPA values in brackets): In some dialects also long variants of those vowels can appear: ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, ы̄, ǝ̄. (citation?)

Consonants

Sarikoli has 30 consonants: Sarikoli consonants according to Russian Iranologist transcription (IPA values in slashes): p , b , t , d , k , g , q , c , ʒ , č , ǰ , s , z , x̌ , γ̌ , f , v , θ , δ , x , γ , š , ž , h , w , y , m , n , l , r

Stress

Most words receive stress on the last syllable; however, a minority receive stress on their first syllable. Also, several noun

declension In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ...

s and verb

inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and ...

s regularly place stress on their first syllable, including the imperative and

interrogative An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is ...

Vocabulary

Although to a large extent the Sarikoli lexicon is quite close to those of other Eastern Iranian languages, there are a large number are words unique to Sarikoli and the closely related Shughni that are not found in other Eastern Iranian languages like Wakhi, Pashto or Avestan.

References

External links

The Tajik Ethnic Group in China
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sarikoli Language Pamir languages Eastern Iranian languages Languages of China Endangered Iranian languages Tajiks of Xinjiang