| Khalaj | |
|---|---|
| خلج | |
 Khalaj in the PersianNasta'liq form | |
| Native to | Iran |
| Region | Distributed throughout a number of villages in theMarkazi Province fromQom toAshtian andTafresh |
| Ethnicity | Khalaj |
Native speakers | 19,000 (2018)[1] |
Turkic
| |
Early form | Arghu |
| Dialects | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | klj |
| Glottolog | turk1303 |
| ELP | Khalaj |
 Map of the location of the Khalaj Language. | |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
Khalaj is aTurkic language spoken inIran. Although it contains many old Turkic elements, it has become widelyPersianized.[5][6] Khalaj has about 150 words of uncertain origin.[7]
Surveys have found that most youngKhalaj parents do not pass the language on to their children; only 5% of families teach their children the language.[1]
The Khalaj language is a descendant of an old Turkic language called Arghu.[8][9] The 11th-century TurkiclexicographerMahmud al-Kashgari was the first person to give written examples of the Khalaj language, which are mostly interchangeable with modern Khalaj.[6]
Gerhard Doerfer, who firstscientifically described Khalaj, demonstrated that it was an independent branch fromCommon Turkic.[9]
The Turkic languages are alanguage family of at least 35 documented languages spoken by theTurkic peoples.[10]
While initially thought to be closely related toAzerbaijani, linguistic studies, particularly those done byGerhard Doerfer, led to the reclassification of Khalaj as a distinct non-Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family.[11] Evidence for the reassignment includes the preservation of the vowel length contrasts found inProto-Turkic (PT),[12] word-initial *h, and the lack of the sound change *d >y characteristic of Oghuz languages.[13]
The conservative character of Khalaj can be seen by comparing the same words across different Turkic varieties. For example, in Khalaj, the word for 'foot' ishadaq, while thecognate word in nearby Oghuz languages isayaq (compareTurkishayak). Because of the preservation of these archaic features, some scholars have speculated that the Khalaj people are the descendants of the Arghu Turks.[14]
Ethnologue andISO formerly listed aNorthwestern Iranian language named "Khalaj" with the same population figure as the Turkic language.[15] The Khalaj speak their Turkic language andPersian, and the supposed Iranian language of the Khalaj isspurious.[16][17]
Khalaj is spoken mainly inMarkazi Province in Iran distributed throughout a number of villages fromQom toAshtian andTafresh.[18] Doerfer cites the number of speakers as approximately 17,000 in 1968, and 20,000 in 1978.[19]Ethnologue reports that the population of speakers grew to 42,107 by 2000;[20][verification needed] however, in 2018 Khalaj poet and researcher Ali Asghar Jamrasi estimated the number of speakers to be 19,000.[1]
The main dialects of Khalaj are Northern and Southern. Within the dialect groupings, individual villages and groupings of speakers have distinct speech patterns.[citation needed]
The linguistic difference between the most distant dialects is not smaller (or even bigger) thanKazan Tatar andBashkir or betweenRumelian Turkish andAzerbaijani.[19]
| Labial | Alveolar | Post- alveolar | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||||
| Stop/ Affricate | voiceless | p | t | ç [t͡ʃ] | k | q | |
| voiced | b | d | c [d͡ʒ] | ɡ | ɢ | ||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ş [ʃ] | x | h | |
| voiced | v | z | ʒ | ğ [ɣ] | |||
| Approximant | l | j | |||||
| Rhotic | r | ||||||
| Front | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | unrounded | rounded | |
| Close | i[i] í[iː] | ü[y] ű[yː] | ı[ɯ] ì[ɯː] | u[u] ú[uː] |
| Mid | e[e] é[eː] | ö[ø] ő[øː] | o[o] ó[oː] | |
| Open | ə[æ] ə́[æː] | a[a] á[aː] | ||
Doerfer claims that Khalaj retains three vowel lengths postulated for Proto-Turkic: long (e.g.qán[qaːn] 'blood'), half-long (e.g.bàş[baˑʃ] 'head') and short (e.g.hat[hat] 'horse').[22][23] However,Alexis Manaster Ramer challenges both the interpretation that Khalaj features three vowel lengths and that Proto-Turkic had the same three-way contrast.[24] Some vowels of Proto-Turkic are realized as fallingdiphthongs, as in[quo̯l] 'arm'.[citation needed]
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Nouns in Khalaj might receive aplural marker orpossessive marker.Cases in Khalaj includegenitive,accusative,dative,locative,ablative,instrumental, andequative.
Forms of case suffixes change based on vowel harmony and the consonants they follow. Case endings also interact with possessive suffixes. A table of basic case endings is provided below:
| Case | Suffix |
|---|---|
| Nominative | ∅ (unmarked) |
| Genitive | -Un, -u:y, -i:, -i:n |
| Dative | -A, -KA |
| Accusative | -I, -NI |
| Locative | -čA |
| Ablative | -dA |
| Instrumental | -lAn, -lA, -nA |
| Equative | -vāra |
The equative can also be expressed by the wordstäkin,täki and other forms.
Verbs in Khalaj areinflected forvoice,tense,aspect, andnegation. Verbs consist of long strings ofmorphemes in the following array:
Due to Persian influence, Khalaj has, likeQashqai, lostconverb constructions of the form-Ib/-Ip.
Khalaj employssubject–object–verb word order.Adjectives precedenouns.
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The core of Khalaj vocabulary is Turkic, but many words have been borrowed fromPersian. Words from neighboring Turkic languages (namely Azerbaijani), have also made their way into Khalaj.
For example, Khalaj numbers are Turkic in form, but some speakers replace the forms for "80" and "90" with Persian terms.
Excerpt from Doerfer & Tezcan 1994, transliterated by Doerfer:[25]
| Translation | IPA | InLatin alphabet | InArabic script[26] |
|---|---|---|---|
| Once, Mullah Nasreddin had a son. | biː ki.niː mol.laː nas.ɾæd.diː.niːn oɣ.lu vaːɾ-aɾ.ti | Bí kiní mollá nasrəddínín oğlu vár-arti. | بیٚ کوٚنیٚ موْللا نصرالدیٚنینْ اوْغلو وار اَرتی. |
| He said, "Oh Father, I want a wife." | hay.dɨ ki "æj baː.ba, mæŋ ki.ʃi ʃæj.jo.ɾum" | Haüdı ki "Əy bába, məñ kişi şəyyorum." | هاوْدیٛ کی «ای بابا، من کیشی شَییوْروم.» |
| He said, "My dear, we have a cow; take this cow and sell it. Come with the proceeds, we shall buy you a wife!" | hay.dɨ ki "bɒː.ba bi.zym biː sɨ.ɣɨ.ɾɨ.myz vaːɾ, je.tip bo sɨ.ɣɨ.ɾɨ saː.tɨ, naɣd ʃæj.i puˑ.lĩn, jæk biz sæ̃ ki.ʃi al.duq" | Haüdı ki "Bába bizüm bí sığırımüz vár, yetip bo sığırı sátı. Nağd şəyi púlín, yək biz sə̃ kişi alduq!" | هاوْدیٛ کی «بابا بیزوٚم بیٚ سیٛغیریموٚز وار، یئتیپ بوْ سیٛغیری ساتی. نقد شییی پوُلینْ، یک بیز سن کیشی آلدوُق. |
A piece offolk poetry by Abdullah Vasheqani,transcribed in theCommon Turkic alphabet and translated into English by Hasan Güzel:[27]
Vaşqan baluqum xeleç teq var tilim |
Vasheqan my village, Khalaj my language
|
Different from Turkic Khalaj [klj] in Iran.
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