Koroshi dialect

Koroshi (Koroshi: کوروشی, Balochi: کورۏشی) is a Balochi dialect. The speakers of Koroshi live in scattered pockets in Southern Iranian Fars province. The number of speakers was estimated to be 1000 in 2006. According to Ethnologue the dialect has 180 speakers within 40 to 50 families.

Entirely isolated from the main body of the Baloch habitat, Koroshi distinguishes itself in grammar and lexicon among Balochi varieties.

Glottolog divides the Koroshi into two categories: Coastal Koroshi and Inland Koroshi.

Phonology

The transcription used here is only an approximation:

Vowels

• short: â, a, e, i, o, u
• long: â:, ā, ē, Ä«, ō, Å«

Consonants

• voiced dental fricative: ð, like in 'sað' (hundred).
• voiced velar fricative: É£, like in 'maÉ£z' (copula).
• alveolar trill: like in 'arra' (saw, the hand tool).
• palatal: 'g' and 'k', like in 'heykal' (body) and 'merzeng' (eyelash).

Grammar

Verbs

• Infinitive markers: -ag ('g' is palatal here).

Nouns

• The suffixes "-yok" and "-â" make nouns definite. Examples:

golâbi (pear) → golâbi-yok (the pear)<br> bâmard (man) → bâmard-â (the man)

• The indefinite marker is "i". Example:

čok (child) → čokk-i (a child)

• The plural is marked by the suffixes "-gal" and "obâr" . Examples:

mardin (man) → mardin-gal (men)<br> sib (apple) → sib-obâr (apples)

• Adjectives are placed before nouns. Examples:

siyâhayn angur (black grape)<br> qašanguveyn pirâhâm (beautiful shirt)

Vocabulary

Example sentences

See also

• Dialects of Fars
• Northwestern Iranian languages
• Iranian languages

References

Further reading

• Nourzaei, M., Jahani, C., Anonby, E., and Ahangar, A. A. (2015). Koroshi. A Corpus-based Grammatical Description. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Studia Iranica Upsaliensia 13. .