Zaza–Gorani languages

Zaza–Gorani
Geographic
distribution:		 Eastern Turkey, North-Western Iran, and Northern Iraq
Linguistic classification: Indo-European
Subdivisions:
Bajelani
Kirmanjki (Northern Zazaki)
Sarli
Dimli (Southern Zazaki)

The Zaza–Gorani languages are a subgroup of the Northwestern Iranian languages. It consists of six related languages: Gorani, Bajelani, Kirmanjki (Northern Zazaki), Dimli (Southern Zazaki), Sarli and Shabaki. Whether to consider them separate languages or only dialects is disputed.

Many speakers of the Zaza–Gorani languages, particularly including Zazaki, Dimli, Gorani and Shabaki actually consider themselves as Kurds despite separate classification by various texts.[1][2][3][4]

Origins

The area of the Northwestern Iranian languages was largely overrun by Turkic languages, subsequently known as Azeri or Azerbaijani, introduced in the eleventh century. By the sixteenth century, this language had ousted the indigenous Iranian languages except from the peripheral area along the Caspian coast. Two of these northwestern dialects, however, survive outside the area; they are Gorani and Zaza. The Gorani moved south, but their language, now much declined, survives only in the neighbourhood of Kermanshah. As the language of an obscure sect, Gorani became the vehicle of a considerable literature. The Zaza people, living in some small communities among the Kurds of Eastern Turkey, are descended from immigrants from Dailam on the southern shore of the Caspian and have in part retained the language of their ancestors, which they themselves call Dimli.

Sources

  1. ^ "Kurdish Nationalism and Competing Ethnic Loyalties", Original English version of: "Nationalisme kurde et ethnicités intra-kurdes", Peuples Méditerranéens no. 68–69 (1994), 11-37
  2. ^ Kehl-Bodrogi, Krisztina. "Syncretistic religious communities in the Near East: Collected Papers of the International Symposium, Alevism in Turkey and Comparable Syncretistic Religious Communities in the Near East in the Past and Present”, Berlin, 14–17 April 1995
  3. ^ Ozoglu, Hakan. "Kurdish notables and the Ottoman state." Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004
  4. ^ Romano, David. "The Kurdish nationalist movement: opportunity, mobilization, and identity." Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

External links