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Yaghnobi language

Yaghnobi is an Eastern Iranian language spoken in the upper valley of the Yaghnob River in the Zarafshan area of Tajikistan by the Yaghnobi people. It is considered to be a direct descendant of Sogdian or closely related to it and has sometimes been called Neo-Sogdian in academic literature. There are some 12,500 Yaghnobi speakers, divided into several communities. The principal group lives in the Zafarobod area. There are also resettlers in the Yaghnob Valley. Some communities live in the villages of Zumand and Kůkteppa and in Dushanbe or its vicinity.

Most Yaghnobi speakers are bilingual in Tajik, a dialect of Persian. Yaghnobi is mostly used for daily family communication, and Tajik is used by Yaghnobi-speakers for business and formal transactions. A Russian ethnographer was told by nearby Tajiks, long hostile to the Yaghnobis, who were late to adopt Islam, that the Yaghnobis used their language as a "secret" mode of communication to confuse the Tajiks. The account led to the assumption by some that Yaghnobi or some derivative of it was used as a secret code.

The language is taught in elementary school within the ethnic community, and Tajikistan has also enacted legislation to support education in minority languages, including Yaghnobi.

There are two main dialects: a western and an eastern one. They differ primarily in phonetics. For example, historical *θ corresponds to t in the western dialects and s in the eastern: met – mes 'day' from Sogdian mēθ . Western ay corresponds to Eastern e: wayš – weš 'grass' from Sogdian wayš or wēš . The early Sogdian group θr (later ṣ̌) is reflected as sar in the east but tir in the west: saráy – tiráy 'three' from Sogdian θrē/θray or ṣ̌ē/ṣ̌ay . There are also some differences in verbal endings and the lexicon. In between the two main dialects is a transitional dialect that shares some features of both other dialects.

Writing

Yaghnobi was mostly unwritten until recent times, but according to Andreyev, some of the Yaghnobi scholars used the Persian script for writing the language before 1928, mainly when they needed to hide some information from the Tajiks.

Nowadays, the language is largely transcribed by scholars using a modified Latin alphabet, with the following symbols:

In the 1990s, Sayfiddin Mirzozoda of the Tajik Academy of Sciences introduced a modified Tajik alphabet for writing Yaghnobi, in addition to several textbooks intended to for elementary school students. The shared orthography between Tajik and Yaghnobi transliterated according to Mirzozoda’s scheme offered the promise of improved literacy among Tajik-literate Yaghnobi youth, but since 2006 the Tajik government has stopped providing funding for the printing of Yaghnobi textbooks and the hiring of teachers of Yaghnobi, and so these efforts have largely stagnated. Additionally, Mirzozoda's method of transliteration presents a few notable drawbacks in that it does not distinguish between the short and long forms of every vowel, it does not distinguish between and , and it has no inherent markings for the indication of stress, as can be seen in Mirzozoda's alphabet, reproduced with its IPA correspondences in this table below.

Cyrillic script

The Yaghnobi Alphabet was same as Tajik but with Ԝ.

Notes to Cyrillic:

  1. The letter й never appears at the beginning of a word. Words beginning with ya-, yo- and yu-/yū-/yʏ are written as я-, ё- and ю-, and the combinations are written in the middle of the word: viyóra is виёра .
  2. Use of Ó£ and Ó¯ is uncertain, but they seem to distinguish two similar-sounding words: and , and . Perhaps Ó£ is also used as a stress marker as it is also in Tajik, and Ó¯ can also be used in Tajik loanwords to indicate a Tajik vowel , but it can have some other unknown use.
  3. In older texts, the alphabet did not use letters Ъ ъ and Э э. Instead of Tajik ъ, Yaghnobi ’ and е covered both Tajik е and э for . Later, the letters were integrated into the alphabet so the older was changed into to represent the pronunciation (and not ). Older was changed to .
  4. and are written е and и. Yaghnobi и can be after a vowel like in Tajik, and ӣ after a vowel is . Also, е has two values: word-initially and after a vowel, it is pronounced , but after a consonant, it is . is rare in Yaghnobi and is only in Tajik or Russian loans, the only example for is , a Russian loanword.
  5. Russian letters Ц ц, Щ щ, Ы ы and Ь ь, which can be used in Tajik loans from Russian, are not used in Yaghnobi. They are written as they are pronounced by the Yaghnobi speakers, not as they are written originally in Russian: aeroplane is in Russian, written in Tajik and pronounced in Russian and in Tajik. In Yaghnobi, it is written as and follows the Yaghnobi pronunciation or . The word concert is borrowed from Russian in the form ). Compare with Tajik .

Phonology

Yaghnobi includes 9 monophthongs (3 short, 6 long), 8 diphthongs, and 27 consonants.

Vowels

The diphthongs in Yaghnobi are . only appears in native words in the western dialects, eastern dialects have in its place, except in loanwords.

  • The monophthongs have these allophonic variants:
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • :
  • was the result of compensatory lengthening ().
  • In recent loans from Tajik and/or Uzbek can also appear, but its pronunciation usually merges to .
  • is only recognised by some authorities. It seems that it is an allophone of , originating from historical stressed *Å«, but historical *ō, changed in Yaghnobi to Å«, remains unchanged. It seems that is unstable, and it is not recorded in all varieties of Yaghnobi. It is often realised as , as well as . By summary: *ū́ (under stress) > Å«/Å«y/uy/ʏ or Å«, *ō > Å« ( "goat"; , ).
  • Before a nasal, can change to , e.g. "Tajikistan", "name".
  • is considered as a long vowel, however before , its pronunciation is somewhat shorter, and is realised as a half-short (or even short) vowel. Etymologically, the "short" e before comes from older *i (there is an alternation e/i before ) if the historical cluster *ih or *iع appears in a closed syllable, and *i changes to e. In open syllables, the change did not take place (that is similar to Tajik). The change can be seen in the verb dih-/deh-: infinitive vs. 3rd sg. present .
  • In Yaghnobi dialects, there can be seen a different development of historical svarabhakti vowel: in the Western and Transitional dialects, it is rendered as (or under certain circumstances), but in the Eastern dialects it changes to (but also or ): *θray > *θəráy > W./Tr. tiráy vs. E. saráy but *βrāt > *vərāt > W./Tr./E. virót.<br>When the second vowel is a back vowel, *ə usually changes to in Western or Transitional dialects: *(čə)θβār > *tfār > *təfór > W./Tr. tufór (but also tifór) vs. E. tafór, *pδūfs- > *bədū́fs > W./Tr./E. budū́fs-. The later change appears also in morphology: verb tifárak (the form is same in all three dialects) has form in 3rd sg. present tufórči < *təfár- < *tfar- < *θβar-. The alternation can be seen also in Tajik loans where an unstressed vowel can undergo this change: W./Tr. Å¡irī́k vs. E. Å¡arī́k < Tajik /Å¡<sup>a</sup>rÄ«k/ "partner", W./Tr. xipár vs. E. xapár < Tajik /x<sup>a</sup>bar/ "news". The former svarabhakti vowels are often ultra-short or reduced in pronunciation, and they can even disappear in fast speech: xišáp /xišáp vs. xⁱšáp vs. xÅ¡ap/ < *xəšáp < *xÅ¡ap.
  • The changes to in verbal stems of type -Car- if an ending containing historic *θ or *t is added: tifár-, infinitive tifárak, 1st sg. present tifarómiÅ¡t but 3rd sg. present tufórči (ending -či comes from older -tiÅ¡t), 2nd pl. present W./Tr. tufórtiÅ¡t E. tufórsiÅ¡t, x°ar-: x°árak : x°arómiÅ¡t : xórči : xórtiÅ¡t/xórsiÅ¡t (when changes to after , loses its labilisation). The change takes place with all verbs of Yaghnobi origin and also with older loans from Tajik. For new loans, a remains unchanged.: gudár(ak) : gudórči vs. pár(ak) : párči: the first verb is an old loan from Tajik guzaÅ¡tan < guδaÅ¡tan, the later a recent loan from parrÄ«dan.

Consonants

  • and are palatalised to and respectively before a front vowel or after a front vowel word-finally.
  • appears as an allophone of between vowels or voiced consonants.
  • , both have allophones and before and , respectively
  • All voiced consonants are pronounced voiceless at the end of the word when after an unvoiced consonant comes a voiced one. Likewise, unvoiced consonants become voiced by assimilation. In voicing q, the voiced opposition is , not .
  • The consonants , , , , , , , appear mostly in loanwords. Native words with those sounds are rare and mostly onomatopoeic.

Morphology

W, E and Tr. refer to the Western, Eastern and Transitional dialects.

Noun

Case endings:

Examples:

  • kat: obl.sg. káti, pl. katt, obl.pl. kátti
  • mayn (W) / men (E) : obl.sg. máyni/méni, pl. maynt/ment, obl.pl. máynti/ménti
  • póda : obl.sg. póday/póde, pl. pódot, obl.pl. pódoti
  • čalló : obl.sg. čallóy, pl. čallót, obl.pl. čallóti
  • zindagī́ : obl.sg. zindagī́y, pl. zindagī́t, obl.pl. zindagī́ti
  • mórti : obl.sg. mórtiy, pl. mórtit, obl.pl. mórtiti
  • Also, the izofa construction is used in Yaghnobi and appears in phrases and constructions adopted from Tajik or with words of Tajik origin.

Pronouns

The second person plural, šumóx is also used as the polite form of the second person pronoun.

Numerals

Verb

Personal endings – present:

Personal endings – preterite (with augment a-):

By adding the ending -išt (-št after a vowel; but -or+išt > -ošt) to the preterite, the durative preterite is formed.

The present participle is formed by adding -na to the verbal stem. Past participle (or perfect participle) is formed by addition of -ta to the stem.

The infinitive is formed by addition of ending -ak to the verbal stem.

Negation is formed by prefix na-, in combination with augment in preterite it changes to nē-.

The copula is this:

Lexicon

Knowledge of Yaghnobi lexicon comes from three main works: from a Yaghnobi–Russian dictionary presented in Yaghnobi Texts by Andreyev and Peščereva and then from a supplementary word list presented in Yaghnobi Grammar by Xromov. The last work is Yaghnobi–Tajik Dictionary compiled by Xromov's student, Sayfiddīn Mīrzozoda, himself a native Yaghnobi speaker. Persian words represent the majority of the lexicon (some 60%), followed by words of Turkic origin (up to 5%, mainly from Uzbek) and a few Russian words (about 2%; through the Russian language, also many international words came to Yaghnobi). Only a third of the lexicon is of Eastern Iranian origin and can be easily comparable to those known from Sogdian, Ossetian, the Pamir languages or Pashto.

A Yaghnobi–Czech dictionary was published in 2010 by the Charles University Faculty of Arts.

Sample texts

An anecdote about Nasreddin

Notes

References

Further reading

(M. S. Andrejev, Je. M. Peščereva, Jagnobskije teksty s priloženijem jagnobsko-russkogo slovarja, Moskva – Leningrad 1957) (in Russian)

  • М. Н. Боголюбов, Ягнобский (новосогдийский) язык. Исследование и материалы. Автореферат на соискание ученой степени доктора филологических наук, Ленинград 1956

(M. N.Bogoljubov, Jagnobskij /novosogdijskij/ jazyk. Issledovanija i materialy. Avtoreferat na soiskanije učenoj stepeni doktora filologičeskix nauk, Leningrad 1956) (in Russian)

(M. N. Bogoljubov: Jagnobskij jazyk. In: V. V. Vinogradov (ed.): Jazyki narodov SSSR. Tom pervyj: Indojevropejskije jazyki. Moskva, 1966, p.&nbsp;342–361) (in Russian)

  • С. Мирзозода, Яғнобӣ зивок, Душанбе 1998.

(S. Mirzozoda, Yaɣnobī zivok, Dušanbe 1998) (in Tajik)

  • С. Мирзозода, Луғати яғнобӣ – тоҷикӣ, Душанбе 2002.

(S. Mirzozoda, Luɣat-i yaɣnobī – tojikī, Dušanbe 2002) (in Tajik)

(Ľ. Novák: Yaghnobi-Czech Dictionary with an Outline of Yaghnobi Grammar. Praha 2010) (in Czech)

(A. L. Xromov, Jagnobskij jazyk, Moskva 1972) (in Russian)

(A. L. Xromov, Jagnobskij jazyk. In. V. S. Rastorgujeva (ed.): Osnovy iranskogo jazykoznanija. Novoiranskije jazyki II. – Vostočnaja gruppa. Moskva 1987, p.&nbsp;644–701.) (in Russian)

External links