Trisha Shetty (Editor)

Kuhmareyi language

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Native to
  
Iran

ISO 639-3
  
fay

Native speakers
  
100,000 (2012)

Glottolog
  
sout2645

Language family
  
Indo-EuropeanIndo-IranianIranianWestern IranianSouthwesternPersidKuhmareyi

Kuhmareyi is one of the languages of southwestern Fars. It is a cluster of disparate dialects; the one illustrated here is the Davani dialect (Davani: devani; Persian: دوانی‎‎, transliteration: Davāni) of the village of Davan, 12 kilometers north of Kazerun city in southern Iran. Davani had an estimated 1,000 speakers in 2004.

Contents

Phonology

The transcription used here is only an approximation.

Vowels

short: â, a, e, i, o, u
long: â:, ā, ē, ī, ō, ū

Consonants

  • voiced dental fricative: ð, generally after vowels, like in, 'bað' (bad).
  • voiced velar fricative: γ, like in "γal'ati" (shroud).
  • alveolar trill: like in 'borrâ' (flail).
  • palatalization: inclination for 'g' and 'k' before front vowels, like in 'bega' (say).
  • voiceless alveolar affricate: ts, like in 'tse' (what), and voiced dz, like in andzi (fig).

    • Verbs

    Davani is ergative in past transitive constructions. For example (Persian transliterations are in UniPers):

    English: Hasan saw Ali in the garden.
    Persian: Hasan,      Ali-râ tuye bâq did.
    Davani:  hasan-eš   ali-a   tu    bâγ di.

    Infinitive markers include -san, -tan, -dan, -ðan.

    Nouns

    The suffix -aku makes nouns definite. For example:

    bard "stone" → bard-aku "the stone"

    The plural is marked by the suffix -gal. -u is exceptionally used for "man". For example:

    sēv "apple" → sēv-gal "apples"
    merd "man" → merd-u "men"

    References

    Kuhmareyi language Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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