Zaza–Gorani languages

Zaza–Gorani
Geographic
distribution:		 Eastern Turkey, North-Western Iran, and Northern Iraq
Linguistic classification:

Indo-European

Subdivisions:
Glottolog: zaza1244[1]

Zaza–Gorani is a group of Northwestern Iranian languages spoken by Kurds.

Languages

Ethnologue counts six languages:

Gorani, Bajelani, Kirmanjki (Northern Zazaki), Dimli (Southern Zazaki), Sarli, Shabaki.

Most speakers, particularly among the Zazaki, Dimli, Gorani and Shabaki, consider themselves to be ethnic Kurds.[2][3][4][5]

Origins

The area of the Northwestern Iranian languages was largely overrun by Turkic languages, subsequently known as Azeri or Azerbaijani, introduced in the 11th century. By the 16th 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 the Ahl-e Haqq, Gorani became the vehicle of a considerable literature. The Zaza people, living adjacent to the Kurds of Eastern Turkey and often considered Kurds themselves, are thought by some to be descended from immigrants from Dailam on the southern shore of the Caspian. They retain the language of their ancestors, speakers of the southern dialect of which call their language Dimli.

Sources

  1. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Zaza–Gorani". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  2. ↑ "Kurdish Nationalism and Competing Ethnic Loyalties", Original English version of: "Nationalisme kurde et ethnicités intra-kurdes", Peuples Méditerranéens no. 68–69 (1994), 11-37
  3. ↑ 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
  4. ↑ Ozoglu, Hakan. "Kurdish notables and the Ottoman state." Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004
  5. ↑ Romano, David. "The Kurdish nationalist movement: opportunity, mobilization, and identity." Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

External links