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Yaghnobi language
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The Yaghnobi language is a living Northeastern Iranian language (the only other living member being Ossetic). Yaghnobi is 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 and has often been called Neo-Sogdian in academic literature.
There are some 12,500 Yaghnobi speakers. They are divided into several communities. The principal group lives in the Zafarobod area. There are also re-settlers in the Yaghnob valley. Some communities live in the villages of Zumand and Kukteppa and in Dushanbe or in its vicinity.
Most Yaghnobi speakers are bilingual in Tajik. Yaghnobi is mostly used for daily family communication, while Tajik is used by Yaghnobi speakers for business and formal transactions. The fact that a single 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 has led to the belief by some (especially those reliant solely on Russian sources) that Yaghnobi or some derivative of it was used as a code for nefarious purposes.
There are two main dialects, a western and an eastern one. These dialects differ primarily in phonetics. For example, to historical *? corresponds t in the western dialects and s in the eastern, e.g. met - mes 'day' from Sogdian me? . To western ay corresponds eastern e, e.g. wayš - weš 'grass' from Sogdian wayš or weš . The early Sogdian group ?r (later š) is reflected as sar in the east but tir in the west, e.g. saráy - tiráy 'three' from Sogdian ?re/?ray or še/šay . t/s and ay/e are not the only features recognised as relevant to distinguish those two dialects, there are also some differences in verbal endings and in the lexicon. In between these two main dialects there is a transitional dialect. It shares some features of the western language and some features of the eastern one.
SoundsYaghnobi includes 9 vowels - 3 short, 6 long - and 27 consonants.
Consonantsstops: , , , , , , ( and can be palatalised to and respectively before a front vowel or after a front vowel at the end of a word)
fricatives: , , , , <š>, <ž>, , , ?? , (also can appear sa an allophone between vowels or voiced consonants), ,
affricates: ,
nasals: , (also and can occur as allophones of m and/or n before k/g or f/v)
trill:
lateral:
approximant: ,
All voiced consonants are pronounced voiceless at the end of the word, in speech when after an unvoiced consonant comes a voiced one, the unoviced is voiced by assimilation. In case of voicing q the voiced opposition is ?, not [?].
Note: Sounds b, g, h, ?, j, q, l and ? appear mostly in loan-words, native words with those sounds are rare, mostly onomatopoeic.
GrammarNote: In following sections symbols W, E and Tr. refer to the western, eastern or transitional dialect.
NounCase endings:
| Case | Stem ending is consonant | Stem ending is vowel other than -a | Stem ending is -a |
|---|
| Sg. Direct (Nominative) | - | - | -a | | Sg. Oblique | -i | -y | -ay (W), -e (E) | | Pl. Direct (Nominative) | -t | -t | -ot | | Pl. Oblique | -ti | -ti | -oti |
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
- calló : obl.sg. callóy, pl. callót, obl.pl. callóti
- zindagi´ : obl.sg. zindagi´y, pl. zindagi´t, obl.pl. zindagi´ti
- mórti : obl.sg. mórtiy, pl. mórtit, obl.pl. mórtiti
PronounsForms of the personal pronouns:
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|
| 1st | man | mox | | 2nd | tu | šumóx | | 3rd | ax, iš | áxtit, íštit |
The 2nd person plural, šumóx also finds use as the polite form of the 2nd person.
Oblique case:
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|
| 1st | man | mox | | 2nd | taw | šumóx | | 3rd | áwi, it | áwtiti, ítiti |
Pronominal enclitics:
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|
| 1st | -(i)m | -(i)mox | | 2nd | -(i)t | -šint | | 3rd | -(i)š | -šint |
VerbPersonal endings - present:
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|
| 1st | -omišt | -imišt | | 2nd | -išt | -tišt (W, Tr.), -sišt (E) | | 3rd | -tišt (W), -ci (E, Tr.) | -ošt |
Personal endings - preterite (with augment a-):
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|
| 1st | a- -im | a- -om (W), a- -im (E, Tr.) | | 2nd | a- -i | a- -ti (W, Tr.), a- -si (E) | | 3rd | a- - | a- -or |
By adding the ending -išt to the preterite a durative preterite is formed.
Participle: 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.
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 ni-.
Copula - Present:
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|
| 1st | im | om | | 2nd | išt | ot (W, Tr.), os (E) | | 3rd | ast, -x, xast, ásti, xásti | or |
LexiconPresent knowledge of Yaghnobi lexicon comes from three main works - from a Yaghnobi-Russian dictionary presented in Yaghnobi texts by Andreyev and Pešcereva and then from a supplementary wordlist presented in Yaghnobi grammar by Xromov. The last work is Yaghnobi-Tajik dictionary compiled by Xromov's student Sayfiddin Mirzozoda. What is now known, in Yaghnobi Tajik words represent the majority of lexicum (some 60%), then come words of Turkic origin (up to 5%, mainly from Uzbek) and few Russian words (approx. 2%; note that through Russian language also many international words came to Yaghnobi). So only about one third of the lexicon is Eastern-Iranian origin, those words can be easily comparable to those known from Sogdian, Ossetian, Pamir languages or Pashto.
Sample text"Fál?ar-at Yá?nob asosí láf-šin i-x gumu´n, néki áxtit tojiki´-pi wóvošt, mox ya?nobi´-pi. 'M?´štif' wóvomišt, áxtit 'Muždív' wóvošt."
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"In Falghar and in Yaghnob is certainly one basic language, but they speak Tajik and we speak Yaghnobi. We say 'Müštif', they say 'Muždiv'."
(In edited Cyrillic orthography it could have been written this way: "???????? ????? ????? ?????? ?? ?????, ???? ????? ???????? ?????, ??? ????????. '??????' ???????, ????? '??????' ?????.")
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