Hazaragi language
Encyclopedia
Hazaragi is a dialect of the Persian language
spoken by the Hazara people, most of all in an area known as the Hazarajat
.
and Mongolian
loanwords
. Despite these differences, Hazaragi is mutually intelligible with other regional Persian dialects.
Academic estimates of the Hazaragi-speaking population range from 1.8 to over 2.2 million speakers.
Hazaragi is a dialect of the Persian language (recognized as a language by Ethnologue), with loanwords borrowed from Mongolian and Turkic. It is a member of the Iranian
branch of the Indo-European family and is closely related to Dari Persian
(the Persian dialect in Afghanistan
). Hazaragi in the Daykundi Province has a significant admixture of Altaic influence in the language.
and also in major urban areas), Pakistan (particularly Quetta
) and Iran
(particularly Mashhad
), with diaspora communities in the Americas
, Europe
and Australia
.
, prompting the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to moves towards an official recognition of Hazaragi language. Currently NAATI (national accreditation authority for translators and interpreters) holds interpreting tests for Hazaragi as a distinct language, noting in test materials that Hazaragi varies by dialect, and that any dialect of Hazaragi may be used in interpreter testing as long as it would be understood by the average speaker. The test materials also note that Hazaragi in some locations has been significantly influenced by surrounding languages, and that the use of non-Hazaragi words assimilated from neighboring languages would be penalised in testing.
during the time of the Mongol king Babur
, who came to Afghanistan
in the 16th century, many well established scholars like Bacon and Schumann believe that the original language of Hazaras was Dari Persian from the beginning. Dulling wrote that the language of Hazaras was a mixed of Persian and Hindi in which Persian took over Hindi in the Middle Ages.
A distinct Hazara Persian dialect began to emerge amongst the people of the Hazarajat in the late eighteenth century. The Hazara spoke Mongolian until the late eighteenth century. During the time of King Babur
Hazaras spoke the Mongolian language of their ancestors. It is not certain when Mongolian died out as a living language in the Hazarajat. Dulling states that, “they ceased to be Mongol speakers by the end of eighteenth century at the latest, and were then speaking Tajik
of a sort”.
and emergence of Hazaragi amongst the people of the Hazarajat. The first was the civilization of Persia, their knowledge, art and culture which strongly affected the people living in the mountains of central Afghanistan. The second major reason was the religion of Islam and the role of the Persian language in Islam.
), of whom a large number also took refuge in sub-continent (current India
and Pakistan
). It is said that the “Soofis” both Iranian and non-Iranian left indelible memories in the propagation of Persian language
.
The second generation of Mongolians, in order to maintain control of a Persian-speaking country, of necessity adapted to the Persian culture and language. The linking and love of Iranian culture and language so enamored the Mongol rulers that they themselves, became the best proponents of the Iranian culture and language. The courts of Mughal kings such as Akbar, Shah Jahan
, Jahangir
attracted many Iranian poets and men of learning.
When Nadir Shah Afshar conquered Kandahar
in 1150 A.H, in order to propagate the Persian language in Afghanistan, he planted settlements from Iran and moved a number of people from Afghanistan, whom he settled by grants of land in the middle of Iran. The Qizilbash People are from these new settlers.
throughout the continent. This is noted in the famous Turkish saying Kim ki okur Farsi, varir dinin yarisi ("he who learns Persian, grabs half of the faith").
Timur
, though he committed many great depredations, was brought up according to the Iranian culture and patronized the learned to such an extent that Samarkand
and Herat
became seats of Iranian learning.
Similarly the Ilkhanate
Mongols (one main tribe of the ancestors of Hazara) rulers became so involved with Persian that after Iskan Khan, when the Mongols went to the mountains of present Hazarajat they took the language of Persia with them along with Shi'a Islam.
There are some Hazaras, mainly in Karez and Kundur between Maymana and Herat
(northwestern and western Afghanistan) who still speak the Mongolian language that other Hazaras do not understand.
Dulling says in his book "Grammatically the Mongolian was probably fairly pure, it contained a certain amount of original language, Persian and its substratum. It would seem, too, that because the long period that separated the initial and final Mongol settlements, the Mongol language itself was not homogeneous, containing as it did not only Middle Mongol but also modern Mongol elements.”
The existence of Mongolian and Turkic languages is discussed in Hayat Mohammad Khan's Hayate Afghan:
Khan concludes that because of their connection in the Government in Zabul their language underwent a change into a dialect of Persian spoken by the Zabulis, their own Mongolian ceased to exist owing the passage of time.
or even kabuli Persian. The most striking feature of this dialect is its lexicon that includes many notable items of uncertain origin. G. K. Dulling considers “the present dialect to consist of three strata:
He is probably right when he asserts so and that: “Although these dialects are essentially forms of modern Tajik [more properly modern Dari; they are nevertheless lexically distinctive enough to merit their local special name of ‘Hazaragi’”. Examples of the vocabulary are: Turkic [ata “father”], [kaṭa “big, large”], [qara “black”]; Mongolian: [beri “bride”], [alagha “palm (of hand)”], [qulaghay “thief”].
Diphthongs are [ay], [aw], and [ēw] (Persian [-ab]-[āb]-[ûw]). The vocalic system is typically eastern Persian characterized by the loss of length distinction, the retention of the mid vowels, and the rounding of [ā] [å/o], alternating with its merger with [a], or [û] (Persian-ān).
Stress is dynamic and similar to that in Dari Afghan Persian and tajiki Persian, and not variable. It generally falls on the last syllable of a nominal form, including derivative suffixes and a number of morphological markers. Typical is the insertion of epenthetic vowels in consonant clusters, example: [pashm (pašm)] to [pashum (póšum)] meaning [wool] and final devoicing, example: [Khod (ḵût)] meaning [self, own].
Moreover, all past and remote forms have developed imperfective forms marked by [mi-]. There are doubts about several of the less commonly found, or recorded, forms, in particular those with [ḵot]. However, the systematic arrangement of all forms according to their morphological, as well as semantic, function shows that those forms fit well within the overall pattern. The system may tentatively be shown as follows (all forms are 1st sing), leaving out complex compound forms such as [zada ḵot mu-buda baš-um].
In the assumptive, the distinction appears to be not between present versus past, but indefinite versus definite. Also, similar to all Persian varieties, the imperfective forms in [mi-] and past perfect forms, such as mi-zad-um, zadabud-um, are used in irreal conditional clauses and wishes, e.g., kaški zimi qulba kadagi mu-but “If the field would only be/have been plowed!” Modal verbs, such as tan- “can,” are constructed with the perfect participle, e.g., ma bû-r-um, da čaman rasid-a ḵot tanist-um “I shall go, and may be able to get to Čaman.” Participial nominalization are typical, both with the perfect participle, e.g., kad-a “(having) done” and with the derived participle with passive meaning, kad-ag-i “having been done,” e.g., zimin-i qulba kada-ya “The field is ploughed,” zamin-i qulba (na-)šuda-ra mi-ngar-um “I am looking at a plowed/unplowed field,” imrûz [u ḵondagi] tikrar mu-kun-a "Today he repeats (reading) what he had read.” The gerundive, e.g., kad-an-i “to be done,” is likewise productive, e.g., yag čiz, ki uftadani baš-a, ma u-ra qad-dist-ḵu girift-um, tulḡa kad-um “One object, that was about to fall, I grabbed, and held it.” The clitic [-ku/-ḵu] topicalizes parts of speech, [-di] the predicate; e.g., i-yši raft, ma-ḵu da ḵona mand-um “He himself left; I, though, I stayed.”
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
spoken by the Hazara people, most of all in an area known as the Hazarajat
Hazarajat
The Hazarajat is the original homeland of the Hazara people, and lies in the central highlands of Afghanistan, among the Koh-i-Baba mountains and the western extremities of the Hindu Kush. Its physical boundaries, however, are roughly marked by the Bamiyan Basin to the north, the headwaters of...
.
General
The primary differences between Standard Persian and Hazaragi are the accent and Hazaragi's greater array of TurkicTurkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
and Mongolian
Mongolian language
The Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...
loanwords
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
. Despite these differences, Hazaragi is mutually intelligible with other regional Persian dialects.
Academic estimates of the Hazaragi-speaking population range from 1.8 to over 2.2 million speakers.
Classification
Hazaragi is classified and further subclassified as an Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Iranian, Western, Southwestern, Persian, Hazaragi Language.Hazaragi is a dialect of the Persian language (recognized as a language by Ethnologue), with loanwords borrowed from Mongolian and Turkic. It is a member of the Iranian
Iranian languages
The Iranian languages form a subfamily of the Indo-Iranian languages which in turn is a subgroup of Indo-European language family. They have been and are spoken by Iranian peoples....
branch of the Indo-European family and is closely related to Dari Persian
Dari (Persian)
Dari or Fārsī-ye Darī in historical terms refers to the Persian court language of the Sassanids. In contemporary usage, the term refers to the dialects of modern Persian language spoken in Afghanistan, and hence known as Afghan Persian in some Western sources. It is the term officially recognized...
(the Persian dialect in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
). Hazaragi in the Daykundi Province has a significant admixture of Altaic influence in the language.
Geographic distribution
Hazaragi is spoken by Hazara people who mainly live in Afghanistan (the HazarajatHazarajat
The Hazarajat is the original homeland of the Hazara people, and lies in the central highlands of Afghanistan, among the Koh-i-Baba mountains and the western extremities of the Hindu Kush. Its physical boundaries, however, are roughly marked by the Bamiyan Basin to the north, the headwaters of...
and also in major urban areas), Pakistan (particularly Quetta
Quetta
is the largest city and the provincial capital of the Balochistan Province of Pakistan. Known as the "Fruit Garden of Pakistan" due to the diversity of its plant and animal wildlife, Quetta is home to the Hazarganji Chiltan National Park, which contains some of the rarest species of wildlife in the...
) and Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
(particularly Mashhad
Mashhad
Mashhad , is the second largest city in Iran and one of the holiest cities in the Shia Muslim world. It is also the only major Iranian city with an Arabic name. It is located east of Tehran, at the center of the Razavi Khorasan Province close to the borders of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. Its...
), with diaspora communities in the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
, Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
.
Diaspora
In recent years a substantial population of Hazara refugees have settled in AustraliaAustralia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, prompting the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to moves towards an official recognition of Hazaragi language. Currently NAATI (national accreditation authority for translators and interpreters) holds interpreting tests for Hazaragi as a distinct language, noting in test materials that Hazaragi varies by dialect, and that any dialect of Hazaragi may be used in interpreter testing as long as it would be understood by the average speaker. The test materials also note that Hazaragi in some locations has been significantly influenced by surrounding languages, and that the use of non-Hazaragi words assimilated from neighboring languages would be penalised in testing.
History
The history of the language of the Hazara people has been an issue of some debate. While some scholars believe that the Hazara originally spoke a Mongolian languageMongolian language
The Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...
during the time of the Mongol king Babur
Babur
Babur was a Muslim conqueror from Central Asia who, following a series of setbacks, finally succeeded in laying the basis for the Mughal dynasty of South Asia. He was a direct descendant of Timur through his father, and a descendant also of Genghis Khan through his mother...
, who came to Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
in the 16th century, many well established scholars like Bacon and Schumann believe that the original language of Hazaras was Dari Persian from the beginning. Dulling wrote that the language of Hazaras was a mixed of Persian and Hindi in which Persian took over Hindi in the Middle Ages.
A distinct Hazara Persian dialect began to emerge amongst the people of the Hazarajat in the late eighteenth century. The Hazara spoke Mongolian until the late eighteenth century. During the time of King Babur
Babur
Babur was a Muslim conqueror from Central Asia who, following a series of setbacks, finally succeeded in laying the basis for the Mughal dynasty of South Asia. He was a direct descendant of Timur through his father, and a descendant also of Genghis Khan through his mother...
Hazaras spoke the Mongolian language of their ancestors. It is not certain when Mongolian died out as a living language in the Hazarajat. Dulling states that, “they ceased to be Mongol speakers by the end of eighteenth century at the latest, and were then speaking Tajik
Tajik language
Tajik, Tajik Persian, or Tajiki, is a variety of modern Persian spoken in Central Asia. Historically Tajiks called their language zabani farsī , meaning Persian language in English; the term zabani tajikī, or Tajik language, was introduced in the 20th century by the Soviets...
of a sort”.
Decline of the Mongolian language
There seem to be two main reasons that caused the demise of Mongolian languageMongolian language
The Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...
and emergence of Hazaragi amongst the people of the Hazarajat. The first was the civilization of Persia, their knowledge, art and culture which strongly affected the people living in the mountains of central Afghanistan. The second major reason was the religion of Islam and the role of the Persian language in Islam.
Persian art and culture
The Persian language extended and spread out of the boundaries of Iran and supplanted the language of Mongols. After the Mongol assault in Iran from 1219 to 1221 and slaughter of the learned men, some of them fled and went out to Greater Khurasan (now northern AfghanistanAfghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
), of whom a large number also took refuge in sub-continent (current India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
). It is said that the “Soofis” both Iranian and non-Iranian left indelible memories in the propagation of Persian language
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
.
The second generation of Mongolians, in order to maintain control of a Persian-speaking country, of necessity adapted to the Persian culture and language. The linking and love of Iranian culture and language so enamored the Mongol rulers that they themselves, became the best proponents of the Iranian culture and language. The courts of Mughal kings such as Akbar, Shah Jahan
Shah Jahan
Shah Jahan Shah Jahan (also spelled Shah Jehan, Shahjehan, , Persian: شاه جهان) (January 5, 1592 – January 22, 1666) Shah Jahan (also spelled Shah Jehan, Shahjehan, , Persian: شاه جهان) (January 5, 1592 – January 22, 1666) (Full title: His Imperial Majesty Al-Sultan al-'Azam wal Khaqan...
, Jahangir
Jahangir
Jahangir was the ruler of the Mughal Empire from 1605 until his death. The name Jahangir is from Persian جهانگیر,meaning "Conqueror of the World"...
attracted many Iranian poets and men of learning.
When Nadir Shah Afshar conquered Kandahar
Kandahar
Kandahar is the second largest city in Afghanistan, with a population of about 512,200 as of 2011. It is the capital of Kandahar Province, located in the south of the country at about 1,005 m above sea level...
in 1150 A.H, in order to propagate the Persian language in Afghanistan, he planted settlements from Iran and moved a number of people from Afghanistan, whom he settled by grants of land in the middle of Iran. The Qizilbash People are from these new settlers.
Persian and Islam
One of the reasons behind the demise of Mongolian language was the religion of Islam. The Persian language became so much part of the religion of Islam that it almost went wherever Islam took roots. Persian entered, in this way, into the very faith and thought of the people embracing IslamIslam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
throughout the continent. This is noted in the famous Turkish saying Kim ki okur Farsi, varir dinin yarisi ("he who learns Persian, grabs half of the faith").
Timur
Timur
Timur , historically known as Tamerlane in English , was a 14th-century conqueror of West, South and Central Asia, and the founder of the Timurid dynasty in Central Asia, and great-great-grandfather of Babur, the founder of the Mughal Dynasty, which survived as the Mughal Empire in India until...
, though he committed many great depredations, was brought up according to the Iranian culture and patronized the learned to such an extent that Samarkand
Samarkand
Although a Persian-speaking region, it was not united politically with Iran most of the times between the disintegration of the Seleucid Empire and the Arab conquest . In the 6th century it was within the domain of the Turkic kingdom of the Göktürks.At the start of the 8th century Samarkand came...
and Herat
Herat
Herāt is the capital of Herat province in Afghanistan. It is the third largest city of Afghanistan, with a population of about 397,456 as of 2006. It is situated in the valley of the Hari River, which flows from the mountains of central Afghanistan to the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan...
became seats of Iranian learning.
Similarly the Ilkhanate
Ilkhanate
The Ilkhanate, also spelled Il-khanate , was a Mongol khanate established in Azerbaijan and Persia in the 13th century, considered a part of the Mongol Empire...
Mongols (one main tribe of the ancestors of Hazara) rulers became so involved with Persian that after Iskan Khan, when the Mongols went to the mountains of present Hazarajat they took the language of Persia with them along with Shi'a Islam.
There are some Hazaras, mainly in Karez and Kundur between Maymana and Herat
Herat
Herāt is the capital of Herat province in Afghanistan. It is the third largest city of Afghanistan, with a population of about 397,456 as of 2006. It is situated in the valley of the Hari River, which flows from the mountains of central Afghanistan to the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan...
(northwestern and western Afghanistan) who still speak the Mongolian language that other Hazaras do not understand.
Mongolian and Turkic influence
Modern Hazaragi contains a number of Mongolian and Turkic words. Over time the Mongolian language has died out in Afghanistan as living language amongst the Hazara people. Persian language has had a strong impression on the people of Hazarajat due to religion and Iranian learning and culture. The very first known language of Hazara people, inherited by the Mongolians is being supplanted by the ambience the speakers are living in. Such as Afghanistan: where the Hazaragi speakers are adding more and more Dari to their language, whereas in Pakistan the Hazara are adding more Urdu and English words to Hazaragi. A number of Hazara people live in the United States, Europe and Australia where they adapt the language culture of their respective countries. Time affects language strongly and this has happened to Hazaragi.Dulling says in his book "Grammatically the Mongolian was probably fairly pure, it contained a certain amount of original language, Persian and its substratum. It would seem, too, that because the long period that separated the initial and final Mongol settlements, the Mongol language itself was not homogeneous, containing as it did not only Middle Mongol but also modern Mongol elements.”
The existence of Mongolian and Turkic languages is discussed in Hayat Mohammad Khan's Hayate Afghan:
-
- It seems difficult to classify the language spoken by them as it is an amalgam of various dialects. From the Persian spoken by them it cannot be ascertained definitely as to what qaum [race, people] they belong to. Their language resembles to that of Zabulis. Baber in his memoirs has sometimes written that they are Mongols and Mongolian words are in their language; and at another place he (Baber) calls them Hazara Turkomans, Turkish words are also found in their language. If they are Turks, why is there such a profusion of Mongolian in their language? Considering that their neighbor in the north are Turks of Turkestan and in the south, there are Pashto dialects. It is strange that the people in between have a Persian language of their own.
Khan concludes that because of their connection in the Government in Zabul their language underwent a change into a dialect of Persian spoken by the Zabulis, their own Mongolian ceased to exist owing the passage of time.
Grammatical structure
The grammatical structure of Hazaragi is practically identical with that of DariDari language
Dari language may refer to*Dari , an ethnolect of the Zoroastrians of Yazd and Kerman*Dari , a modern variety of Persian language, spoken in Afghanistan*Persian language...
or even kabuli Persian. The most striking feature of this dialect is its lexicon that includes many notable items of uncertain origin. G. K. Dulling considers “the present dialect to consist of three strata:
- pre-Mongol Persian, with its own substratum;
- the Mongolian language; and
- modern Tajiki, which preserves in it elements of (1) and (2).
He is probably right when he asserts so and that: “Although these dialects are essentially forms of modern Tajik [more properly modern Dari; they are nevertheless lexically distinctive enough to merit their local special name of ‘Hazaragi’”. Examples of the vocabulary are: Turkic [ata “father”], [kaṭa “big, large”], [qara “black”]; Mongolian: [beri “bride”], [alagha “palm (of hand)”], [qulaghay “thief”].
Phonology
As a group of eastern persian varieties, Hazara retains the voiced fricative [γ] and the bilabial articulation of [w] has borrowed the (rare) retro flexes [ṭ] [ḍ] example: [buṭ meaning boot] vs. [but meaning idol] (Persian. Bot); and rarely articulates [h].Diphthongs are [ay], [aw], and [ēw] (Persian [-ab]-[āb]-[ûw]). The vocalic system is typically eastern Persian characterized by the loss of length distinction, the retention of the mid vowels, and the rounding of [ā] [å/o], alternating with its merger with [a], or [û] (Persian-ān).
Stress is dynamic and similar to that in Dari Afghan Persian and tajiki Persian, and not variable. It generally falls on the last syllable of a nominal form, including derivative suffixes and a number of morphological markers. Typical is the insertion of epenthetic vowels in consonant clusters, example: [pashm (pašm)] to [pashum (póšum)] meaning [wool] and final devoicing, example: [Khod (ḵût)] meaning [self, own].
Nominal morphology
The most productive derivative marker is [-i] the plural markers are [-o] (persian [-hā]), example: [kitab-o meaning books] and animate [-û] (persian [-ān]) example: [birar-û meaning brothers]. The emphatic vocative marker is [û] and [-o], the indefinite marker is [-i], and the specific object marker is [-(r)a]. The comparative marker is [-tar], example: [kalû meaning big] az u (kada) kalû-tar bigger than that one. Dependent adjectives and nouns follow the head noun and are connected by [-i], example: kitab-i mamud the book of Maḥmud; topicalized possessors precede the head noun marked by the resumptive personal suffix, example, Zulmay ayê-ši literally Zulmay her mother. Prepositions include, in addition to the standard Persian ones, [khun/ḵun(i) meaing with, by means of,] [da meaing in] (persian [dar]); the latter often replaces [ba meaning to] in dative function; loaned postpositions include comitative [-qati meaning together with] and [(az) -worî meaning like]. Interrogatives typically function also as indefinites, example: [kudam meaing which, someone].| Singular/Plural | First person | Second person | Third person | Persian /Dari |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| singular | ma [me, I] | tu [you] | e/u [this/that] | |
| plural | mû [we,us] | šimû/šumû | yo/wo [these/those] | i-hā/u-hā |
| singular | -um [mine] | -it/khu/–tû [your/yours] | ||
| plural | -mû [ours] | –tû/-šimû/šumû [your/yours] | -iš/-(i)ši [thier] |
Particles, conjunctions, modals, and adverbials
These include [atê/arê meaning yes]; [amma, liken, wali meaning but]; [balki meaning however]; [shayadi/šaydi meaning perhaps];[ale meaning now,]; [wuḵt-a meaning then]. These are also marked by distinctive initial stress.| Hazaragi | Persian/Dari | English |
|---|---|---|
| aku | aknun | now |
| del'dara | dalil darad | maybe |
Verb morphology
The imperfective marker is [mi-] (assimilated variants m-, mu-, m-, mê-), example: [mi-zan-um] I hit, I am hitting; the subjunctive and imperative marker is [bi-] (with similar assimilation); the negation is [na-], example: [na-mi-zad-um] I was not hitting. These usually attract stress.Tenses
The tense, mood, and aspect system is typically quite different from western Persian. The basic tense system is threefold: present-future, past, and remote (pluperfect). New modal paradigms developed in addition to the subjunctives:- The non-seen/mirative that originates in the resultative-stative perfect (e.g., zad-ēm persian zada am), which has largely lost its non-modal use;
- the potential, or assumptive, which is marked by the invariant [ḵot/khad] (persian ḵāh-ad it is wanted, intended) combined with the indicate and subjunctive forms.
Moreover, all past and remote forms have developed imperfective forms marked by [mi-]. There are doubts about several of the less commonly found, or recorded, forms, in particular those with [ḵot]. However, the systematic arrangement of all forms according to their morphological, as well as semantic, function shows that those forms fit well within the overall pattern. The system may tentatively be shown as follows (all forms are 1st sing), leaving out complex compound forms such as [zada ḵot mu-buda baš-um].
In the assumptive, the distinction appears to be not between present versus past, but indefinite versus definite. Also, similar to all Persian varieties, the imperfective forms in [mi-] and past perfect forms, such as mi-zad-um, zadabud-um, are used in irreal conditional clauses and wishes, e.g., kaški zimi qulba kadagi mu-but “If the field would only be/have been plowed!” Modal verbs, such as tan- “can,” are constructed with the perfect participle, e.g., ma bû-r-um, da čaman rasid-a ḵot tanist-um “I shall go, and may be able to get to Čaman.” Participial nominalization are typical, both with the perfect participle, e.g., kad-a “(having) done” and with the derived participle with passive meaning, kad-ag-i “having been done,” e.g., zimin-i qulba kada-ya “The field is ploughed,” zamin-i qulba (na-)šuda-ra mi-ngar-um “I am looking at a plowed/unplowed field,” imrûz [u ḵondagi] tikrar mu-kun-a "Today he repeats (reading) what he had read.” The gerundive, e.g., kad-an-i “to be done,” is likewise productive, e.g., yag čiz, ki uftadani baš-a, ma u-ra qad-dist-ḵu girift-um, tulḡa kad-um “One object, that was about to fall, I grabbed, and held it.” The clitic [-ku/-ḵu] topicalizes parts of speech, [-di] the predicate; e.g., i-yši raft, ma-ḵu da ḵona mand-um “He himself left; I, though, I stayed.”
See also
- Hazara people
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