| Khalaj | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arghu | ||||
| Spoken in | Iran | |||
| Region | Northeast of Arak in Markazi Province of Iran | |||
| Native speakers | 42,100 (2000) | |||
| Language family |
Turkic
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | klj | |||
| Linguasphere | part of 44-AAB-a | |||
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Khalaj is a Turkic language spoken in Iran. It is a member of the Azerbaijani subgroup of the Oghuz languages. There were approximately 42,000 speakers of this language as of 2000. ISO 639-3 uses the name Turkic Khalaj to distinguish it from the Indo-Iranian language called "Khalaj".
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Khalaj has traditionally been classified with Turkmen or Azerbaijani dialects, primarily because of its proximity to those languages. However, it is not a dialect of Azerbaijani, as previously supposed. Further, features such as preservation of three vowel lengths, preservation of word-initial Proto-Turkic *h, and lack of the sound change *d > y has led to a non-Oghuz classification of Khalaj. An example of these archaisms is present in the word hadaq ("foot"), which has preserved the initial *h and medial *d. The equivalent form in nearby Oghuz dialects is ayaq. Therefore it is an independent language that became distinct very early from other extant Turkic languages.[1][2] Because of the preservation of these archaic features, some scholars have speculated that the Khalaj are the descendants of the Arghu Turks.
Khalaj is spoken mainly in Markazi Province in Iran. Doerfer cites the number of speakers as approximately 17,000 in 1968; the Ethnologue reports that the population of speakers grew to 42,107 by 2000. Most are bilingual in Persian; some children know only Persian.[2]
The main dialects of Khalaj are Northern and Southern. Within these dialect groupings, individual villages and groupings of speakers have distinct speech patterns.
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal or postalveolar |
Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||||||||
| Stop | p | b | t | d | tʃ | dʒ | k | ɡ | q | ɢ | ||
| Fricative | f | v | s | z | ʃ | ʒ | x | ɣ | h | |||
| Flap | ɾ | |||||||||||
| Approximant | l | j | ||||||||||
Vowels in Khalaj occur in three lengths: long (e.g. [qaːn] 'blood'), half-long (e.g. [baˑʃ] 'head'), and short (e.g. [hat] 'horse'). Additionally, some vowels are realized as falling diphthongs, as in [quo̯l] ('arm, sleeve').
Nouns in Khalaj may receive a plural marker or possessive marker. Cases in Khalaj include genitive, accusative, dative, locative, ablative, instrumental, and equative.
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 | - |
| Dative | -A, -KA |
| Accusative | -I, -NI |
| Locative | -čA |
| Ablative | -dA |
| Instrumental | -lAn, -lA, -nA |
| Equative | -vāra |
Verbs in Khalaj are inflected for voice, tense, aspect, and negation. Verbs consist of long strings of morphemes in the following array:
Khalaj employs subject–object–verb word order. Adjectives precede nouns.
The core of Khalaj vocabulary is Turkic, but many words have been borrowed from Persian. Words from neighboring Turkic dialects, namely, Azerbaijani have also made their way into Khalaj.
Khalaj numbers are Turkic in form, but some speakers replace the forms for "80" and "90" with Persian terms:
| Translation | IPA | |
|---|---|---|
| Once, Mullah Nasreddin had a son. | biː ki.niː mol.laː nas.ɾæd.diː.niːn oɣ.lu vaːɾ-aɾ.ti | |
| He said, "Oh Father, I want a wife." | hay.dɨ ki "æj baː.ba, mæn ki.ʃi ʃæj.jo.ɾum" | |
| He said, "My dear, we have a cow; take this cow and sell it. Come with the proceeds, we will buy you a wife! | hay.dɨ ki "bɒː.ba bi.zym biː sɨ.ɣɨ.ɾɨ.myz vaːɾ, je.tib̥ bo sɨ.ɣɨ.ɾɨ saː.tɨ, naɣd ʃæj.i puˑ.lĩn, jæk biz sæ̃ ki.ʃi al.duq |
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