Yaghnobi language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Yagnobi | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Tajikistan | |
| Region: | originally from Yaghnob Valley, relocated to the south of the country | |
| Total speakers: | 3,000-6,000 | |
| Language family: | Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Eastern Northeastern Yagnobi |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | ira | |
| ISO/FDIS 639-3: | yai
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The Yaghnobi language [1] is a living Northeastern Iranian language (the only other living member being the Ossetic), and is spoken in high valley of the Yaghnob River in the Zarafshan area of Tajikistan by Yaghnobi people. It is considered to be direct descendant of Sogdian by many linguists. There are between 3,000 and 6,000 Yaghnobi speakers.
Most Yaghnobi speakers are bilingual in Tajik. Yaghnobi is used mostly for daily family communication, while Tajik is used by Yaghnobi speakers for business and formal transactions.
There are two main dialects, western and eastern, which differ primarily in phonetics. For example, to the historical *θ is t in the western dialects and in the eastern there is s, e.g. met - mes (day; from Sogdian mēθ <myθ>), and the Western ay corresponds to eastern e, i.e. wayš - weš (grass; Sogdian wayš or wēš <wyš>).
The fact that a single Russian ethnographer was told by nearby Tajiks- long hostile to the Yaghnobis, who were late to adopt Islam- that the Yaghnobis used their language as a "secret" mode of communication to confuse the Tajiks has led to the belief by some (especially those reliant solely on Russian sources) that Yaghnobi or some derivative of it was used as a code for nefarious purposes.
Yaghnobi was a scriptless language until 1990s[2], but according to some ethnographers the Yaghnobis used a modified form of the Arabic alphabet. Nowdays the language is transcribed by scholars using a modified Latin alphabet, with the following symbols:
a (á) (ā, ā́), b, č, d, e (é), f, g, γ, h, ẖ, i (í), ī (ī́), ǰ, k, q, l, m (m̃), n (ñ), o (ó), p, r, s, š, t, u (ú), ū (ū́), ʏ (ʏ́), v, w, x, x°, y, z, ž, ع
Phonetics: 8 vowels - 3 short, 5 long - and 27 consonants.
vowels:
short: i [i-ɪ-e], a, u [u-ʊ-o]
long: ī, e, o, ū, ʏ (and ā as a result of secondary lenghtening)
(note that long e, o and ʏ are conventionally not written with the lenghtening sign)
consonants:
stops: p, b, t, d, k, ɡ, q (k and ɡ can be palatalised to kˈ, ɡˈ before a front vowel or after a front vowel at the end of a word)
fricatives: f, v, s, z, ʃ <š>, ʒ <ž>, χ <x>, ʁ <γ>, χʷ <x°>, h, ħ <ẖ>, ʕ <ع>
nasals: m, n (also ŋ and ɱ can occure as allophones of m and/or n before k/g or f/v, not noted in text)
trill: r
lateral: l
approximant: j <y>
semi-vowel: w
- Please note that ʧ and ʤ are affricates, not palatals
Sample text
"Fálγar-ad Yáγnob asosí láf-šin ī-x gumū́n, néki áxtit toǰīkī́-pi wóvošt, moγ yaγnobī́-pi. 'Mʏ́štif' wóvomišt, áxtit 'Muždív' wóvošt." ['falʁarad 'jaʁnɔ͔:b asɔ͔:'si: 'lafʃɪn 'i:χ gʊ'mu:n 'nɛ:kɪ 'aχtɪt tɔ͔:ʤi:'ki:pɪ 'wɔ͔:vɔ͔:ʃt mɔ͔:ʁ jaʁnɔ͔:'bi:pɪ 'my:ʃtɪf 'wɔ͔:vɔ͔:mɪʃt 'aχtɪt mʊʒ'dɪv 'wɔ͔:vɔ͔:ʃt]
"In Falghar and in Yaghnob is certainly one basic language, but they speak Tajik and we speak Yaghnobi. We say 'Mushtif', they say 'Muzhdiv'."
(In Cyrillic orthography it could have been written this way: "Фалғар-ад Яғноб асоси лаф-шин ӣ-х гумӯн, неки ахтит тоҷикӣ-пи вовошт, мох яғнобӣ-пи. 'Мӯштиф' вовомишт, ахтит 'Муждив' вовошт.")
Sughdian is also transcribed as Sogdian, Sugdian or Soghdian.
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| Indo-Aryan | Sanskrit: Vedic Sanskrit - Classical Sanskrit | Prakrit: Pāli - Magadhi | Hindustani (Registers: Hindi, Urdu) | Bengali (Dialects: Chittagonian, Sylheti) | Angika | Assamese | Bhojpuri | Bishnupriya Manipuri | Dhivehi | Dogri | Gujarati | Konkani | Mahl | Maithili | Marathi | Nepali | Oriya | Punjabi | Romani | Sindhi | Sinhala | ||
| Iranian | Eastern: Avestan | Bactrian | Pamir (Shughni, Sarikoli, Wakhi) | Pashto | Scythian - Ossetic | Sogdian - Yaghnobi | Western: Persian: Old Persian - Middle Persian (Pahlavi) - Modern Persian (Varieties: Iranian Persian, Dari, Tajik) Bukhori | Balochi | Dari (Zoroastrianism) | Gilaki | Kurdish | Mazandarani | Talysh | Tat | Zazaki | ||
| Dardic | Dameli | Domaaki | Gawar-Bati | Kalasha-mun | Kashmiri | Khowar | Kohistani | Nangalami | Pashayi | Palula | Shina | Shumashti | ||
| Nuristani | Askunu | Kalasha-ala | Kamkata-viri | Tregami | Vasi-vari | ||
[edit] Notes
- ^ Also transcribed as: Yaghnabi, Yagnobi or Yagnabi. - yaγnobī́ zivók (in Tajik variant of cyrillic script яғнобӣ зивок [jaʁnɔ͔:'bi: zɪ'vɔ͔:k], Russian ягнобский язык /jagnobskij jazyk/, Tajik забони яғнобӣ /zabon-i yaġnobî/, Persian زبان یغنابى /zæbān-e yæġnābī/, Ossetic ягнобаг æвзаг /yagnobag ævzag/, Polish jagnobski język, Czech jagnóbština, Slovak jagnóbčina; linguistic abbreviation: YAGH
- ^ The Cyrillic Tajik alphabet-based writing were invented by Sayfiddin Mirzozada in 1990s. (Russian) Ягнобцы - Форум «Центральноазиатского исторического сервера»
