KHALAJ LANGUAGE

'Khalaj' is a language spoken primarily in Iran and Afghanistan. It belongs to the Turkic family of languages. There were approximately 42,000 speakers of this language as of 2000.

Contents

Classification

Geographic Distribution

Dialects

Sounds

Consonants

Vowels

Grammar

Morphology

Nouns

Verbs

Syntax

Vocabulary

Numbers

Examples

References

Classification

Khalaj has traditionally been classified with Turkoman or Azerbaijani dialects, primarily because of its proximity to those languages. However, 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'', which has preserved the initial
★ h and medial
★ d. The equivalent form in nearby Oghuz dialects is ''ayaq''. Because of the preservation of these archaic features, some scholars have speculated that the Khalaj are the descendants of the Arghu Turks.

Geographic Distribution

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.

Dialects

The main dialects of Khalaj are Northern and Southern. Within these dialect groupings, individual villages and groupings of speakers have distinct speech patterns.

Sounds

Consonants

'Consonant phonemes'

	Labial		Alveolar		Palatal or postalveolar		Velar		Uvular		Glottal
Stops and affricates
Fricatives
Nasals
Flap/Tap
Lateral
Approximant

Vowels

Vowels in Khalaj occur in three lengths: long ('' "blood"), half-long ('' "head"), and short ('' "horse"). Additionally, some vowels are realized as falling diphthongs, as in '' "arm, sleeve".

Grammar

Morphology

Nouns

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

Verbs in Khalaj are inflected for voice, tense, aspect, and negation. Verbs consist of long strings of morphemes in the following array:
:'Stem + Voice + Negation + Tense/Aspect + Agreement'

Syntax

Khalaj employs Subject Object Verb word order. Adjectives precede nouns.

Vocabulary

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.

Numbers

Khalaj numbers are Turkic in form, but some speakers replace the forms for "80" and "90" with Persian terms:

★ 1 -

★ 2 -

★ 3 -

★ 4 -

★ 5 -

★ 6 -

★ 7 -

★ 8 -

★ 9 -

★ 10 -

★ 20 -

★ 30 -

★ 40 -

★ 50 -

★ 60 -

★ 70 -

★ 80 - (Turkic), (Persian)

★ 90 - (Turkic), (Persian)

★ 100 -

★ 1000 - ,

Examples

;''Excerpt from Dorfer & Tezcan (1994) p. 158-9''

Translation	IPA
Once, Mullah Nasreddin had a son.
He said, "Oh Father, I want a wife."
He said, "My dear, we have a cow; take this cow and sell it. Come, with the proceeds, we will buy you a wife!

References

★ Khalaj Materials, Doerfer, Gerhard, , , Indiana University Press, 1971,

★ Grammatik des Chaladsch, Doerfer, Gerhard, , , Harrassowitz, 1998,

★ Folklore-Texte der Chaladsch, Doerfer, Gerhard & Tezcan, Semih, , , Harrassowitz, 1994,

★ The Turkic Languages, Johanson, Lars & Csató, Éva Ágnes, , , Routledge, 1998,