Khorasani Turkic

Khorasani Turkish
Native to	Iran
Region	north Khorasan Province, Razavi Khorasan Province
Native speakers	(1 million cited 1993)
Language family	Turkic Common Turkic Oghuz Eastern Oghuz Khorasani Turkish
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kmz
Glottolog	khor1269

Khorasani Turkic (Khorasani Turkic: Xorasan Türkçesi, or Qizilbash Turkic) is a language variety in the Turkic language family. It is spoken in northern North Khorasan Province and Razavi Khorasan Province in Iran. Nearly all Khorasani Turkic speakers are also bilingual in Persian.

Geographic distribution

Turkic people in North khorasan region (North Khorasan and Razavi Khorasan provinces); without Turic people that live in west and south counties of khorasan region (Nishapur County, Sabzevar County etc.)

Khorasani Turkic is spoken in the Iranian provinces of North Khorasan, near Bojnourd, and Razavi Khorasan, near Sabzevar, Quchan. If the Oghuz dialect of Uzbek is considered a dialect of Khorasani Turkic, its range extends into western Uzbekistan.

Dialects

Khorasani Turkic is split into North, South, and West dialects. The northern dialect is spoken in North Khorasan near Quchan; the southern in Soltanabad near Sabzevar; the western around Bojnourd.

Classification and related languages

Khorasani Turkic belongs to the Oghuz group of Turkic languages, which also includes Turkish, Azerbaijani, Gagauz, Balkan Gagauz Turkish, Turkmen, and Salar, as well as the Oghuz dialect spoken in Uzbekistan. Khorasani Turkish is most closely related to Oghuz Uzbek and Turkmen and is close to the Azerbaijani dialects spoken in Iran. It is linguistically between Azerbaijani and Turkmen, but it is not a dialect of either.

Sounds

Consonants

Consonant phonemes

	Labial		Alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Uvular		Glottal
Plosive	p	b	t	d			k	ɡ	q
Affricate					t͡ʃ	d͡ʒ
Fricative	f	v	s	z	ʃ		x	ɣ			h
Nasal	m		n		ɲ		ŋ
Flap			r
Lateral			l
Approximant					j

Morphology

Nouns

Pluralization

Pluralization is marked on nouns with the suffix -lAr, which has the two forms -lar and -lær, depending on vowel harmony.

Case

Nouns in Khorasani Turkish take a number of case endings that change based on vowel harmony and whether they follow a vowel or a consonant:

Case	After Vowels	After Consonants
Nominative	No Ending
Genitive	niŋ/nin	iŋ/in
Dative	ya/yæ	a/æ
Accusative	ni/nɯ	i/ɯ
Locative	da/dæ
Ablative	dan/dæn
Instrumental	nan/næn

Possession

Possession is marked with a suffix on the possessed noun.

	Singular	Plural
First Person	(I)m	(I)mIz
Second Person	(I)ŋ	(I)ŋIz
Third Person	(s)I	lArI

Pronouns

Khorasani Turkish has six personal pronouns. Occasionally, personal pronouns take different case endings from regular nouns.

	Singular	Plural
First Person	mæn	bɯz
Second Person	sæn	siz
Third Person	o	olar

Verbs

Verbs are declined for tense, aspect, mood, person, and number. The infinitive form of the verb ends in -max.

Examples

Excerpt from Tulu (1989) p. 90

Translation	IPA
Thus, there was a padishah named Ziyad.	ɑl ɣəssa bir ziyæːd pæːdiʃæːhiː bæːɾɨdɨ
Almighty God had given him no son.	xodɒːʷændi æːlæm ona hit͡ʃ ɔɣul ataː elæmɑmiʃdi
There he spoke to his vizier: "O Vizier, I have no son. What shall I do about it?"	bæːdæn vaziːɾæ dədi, ej vaziːɾ, mændæ ki ɔɣul joxdɨ, mæn næ t͡ʃaːɾæ eylem
The vizier said: "Ruler of the whole world, what will you do with this possession?"	vaziːɾ dədi, pɒːdiʃaː-i ɢɨblæ-ji ɒːlæm, sæn bu mɒːlɨ-æmwɒːlɨ næjlijæsæn

References

Tulu, Sultan (1989). Chorasantürkische Materialien aus Kalāt bei Esfarāyen. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag. ISBN 3-922968-88-0.

Doerfer, Gerhard; Hesche, Wolfram (1993). Chorasantürkisch: Wörterlisten, Kurzgrammatiken, Indices. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN 3-447-03320-7.