Gilaki language.html



The Giləki language is an ancient and living Caspian language, and a member of the northwestern Iranian language branch, spoken in Iran's Mazanderan and Gīlān Provinces.
It has at least three dialects: Western Gilaki, Eastern Gilaki, and Galeshi (in the mountains of Gilan). The Gilaki language is closely related to the Mazanderani, and the two languages have similar vocabularies. The western and eastern dialects are separated by the Sefid River.¹ According to Ethnologue, there were more than 3 million native speakers of Gilaki in 1993.²

Gilaki also shares many features and structures with Zazaki, now spoken in Turkey and the Talysh language. There are some grammatical differences between Gilaki and standard Persian, especially in possessive and adjectives. Unlike Persian, most possessives and adjectives precede the head noun, similar to English.³

• Example for noun-noun possessives in Western Gilaki: məhin zakan (Mæhin's children) (Bæče-ha-ye Mæhin in Persian), Baγi gulan (garden flowers) (Gol-ha-ye Baγ in Persian). In Eastern Gilaki: Xirsi Kuti (bear cub) (Bæč-e Xers in Persian).

• Example for adjectival modification: Western Gilaki: pilla-yi zakan (big children), Surx gul (red flower). Eastern Gilaki: Sərd aw (cold water) (ɑb-e særd in Persian), kul čaqu (sharp knife) (čaqu-ye Tiz in Persian).

Some Gilaki words

Comparison of Gilaki and Kurdish

Phonology

Gilaki has the same consonants as Persian, but different vowels. Here is a table of correspondences for the Western Gilaki of Rasht (as will be the variety used in the remainder of the article):

The consonants are:

Verb system

The verb system of Gilaki is very similar to that of Persian. All infinitives end in -tən/-dən, or in -V:n, where V: is a long vowel (from contraction of an original *-Vdən). The present stem is usually related to the infinitive, and the past stem is just the infinitive without -ən or -n (in the case of vowel stems).

Present tenses

From the infinitive dín, "to see", we get present stem din-.

Present indicative

The present indicative is formed by adding the personal endings to this stem:

Present subjunctive

The present subjunctive is formed with the prefix bí-, bú-, or bə- (depending on the vowel in the stem) added to the indicative forms. Final /e/ neutralizes to /ə/ in the 3rd singular and the plural invariably lacks final /i/.

The negative of both the indicative and the subjunctive is formed in the same way, with n- instead of the b- of the subjunctive.

Past tenses

Preterite

From xurdən, "to eat", we get the perfect stem xurd. To this are added unaccented personal endings and the unaccented b- prefix (or accented n- for the negative):

Imperfect

The imperfect is formed with what was originally a suffix -i:

Pluperfect

The pluperfect is paraphrastically formed with the verb bon, "to be", and the past participle, which is in turn formed with the perfect stem+ə (which can assimilate to become i or u). The accent can fall on the last syllable of the participle or on the stem itself:

Past subjunctive

A curious innovation of Western Gilaki is the past subjunctive, which is formed with the (artificial) imperfect of bon+past participle:

This form is often found in the protasis and apodosis of unreal conditions, e.g., mən agə Əkbəra bidé bim, xušhal bubosti bim, "If I were to see/saw/had seen Akbar, I would be happy".

Progressive

There are two very common paraphrastic constructions for the present and past progressives. From the infinitive šon, "to go", we get:

Present progressive

Past progressive

Compound verbs

There are many compound verbs in Gilaki, whose forms differ slightly from simple verbs. Most notably, bV- is never prefixed onto the stem, and the negative prefix nV- can act like an infix -n-, coming between the prefix and the stem. So from fagiftən, "to get", we get present indicative fagirəm, but present subjunctive fágirəm, and the negative of both, faángirəm or fanígirəm. The same applies to the negative of the past tenses: fángiftəm or fanígiftəm.

Nouns, cases and postpositions

Gilaki employs a combination of quasi-case endings and postpositions to do the work of many particles and prepositions in English and Persian.

Cases

There are essentially three "cases" in Gilaki, the nominative (or, better, unmarked, as it can serve other grammatical functions), the genitive, and the (definite) accusative. The accusative form is often used to express the simple indirect object in addition to the direct object. A noun in the genitive comes before the word it modifies. These "cases" are in origin actually just particles, similar to Persian ra.

Nouns

For the word "per", father, we have:

The genitive can change to -i, especially before some postpositions.

Pronouns

The 1st and 2nd person pronouns have special forms:

The 3rd person (demonstrative) pronouns are regular: /un/, /u.ˈʃan/, /i.ˈʃan/

Postpositions

With the genitive can be combined many postpositions. Examples:

The personal pronouns have special forms with "-re": mere, tere, etc.

Adjectives

Gilaki adjectives come before the noun they modify, and may have the genitive "case ending" -ə/-i. They do not agree with the nouns they modify.

Notes

See also

• Gilaki WiktionaryZ
• Wikipedia in Gilaki
• Mazandarani language, Another Caspian language

External links

The external links in this article may not follow Wikipedia's content policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links.

Gilaki language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Translation of Bible portions in Gilaki plus songs
• Ethnologue report on Gilaki
• Gilaki language, Encyclopeadia Iranica
• Sample recording in Gilaki
• Some fish names in Gilaki and Persian
• Dictionary of Gilaki (Dialect of Lahijan) and some of its characteristics
• A weblog on Gilaki language
• Gilaki poets and Gilaki poetry
• An on-line Gilaki-Persian Dictionary
• A Gilaki Weblog containing some Gilaki words
• Audio files in Gilaki from Varg online collections
• Audio files in Gilaki from Giliran
• Literatures and Newspapers in Gilaki from Varg online collections