Mazanderani language

Etymology

The name Mazanderani (and variants of it) derives from the name of the historical region of Mazandaran (Mazerun in Mazanderani), which was part of former Kingdom of Tapuria. People traditionally call their language Geleki, the same as Gilekis do.

Gileki consist of two morphemes : Gil + postfix ki. The name Tapuri (or Tabari) which was the name of an ancient language of somewhere in former Tapuria, Nowadays becomes prevalent into youth groups instead of Gileki. However, Gilan and Mazanderan were part of the same state known as Tapuria which its national language was known as Gileki.

History

Among the living Iranian languages, Mazanderani has one of the longest written traditions, from the tenth to the fifteenth century. This status was achieved during the long reign of the independent and semi-independent rulers of Mazandaran in the centuries after the Arab invasion.

The rich literature of this language includes books such as Marzban Nameh (later translated into Persian) and the poetry of Amir Pazevari. The use of Mazanderani, however, has been in decline. Its literary and administrative rank was lost to Persian perhaps long before the ultimate integration of Mazandaran into the national administration in the early seventeenth century.

Classification

The Mazanderani language is closely related to Gilaki and the two languages have similar vocabularies. In 1993, according to Ethnologue, there were more than three million native speakers of Mazanderani.

The dialects of Mazanderani are Saravi, Amoli, Baboli, Lafori, Chaloosi, Kelari, Shahsavari, Delandi, Shahmirzadi, Kholardi, Firoozkoohi, Astarabadi, Ramsari and Katouli.

Furthermore, an extinct variety, Gorgani, was documented back to the 14th and 15th centuries, from writings of the Horufi movement.

Grammar

Mazanderani is an inflected and genderless language. It is considered SVO, but in some tenses it may be SOV, depending on dialects however.

Typology

The Gilaki and Mazandarani languages (but not other Iranian languages) share certain typological features with Caucasian languages (specifically South Caucasian languages), reflecting the history, ethnic identity, and close relatedness to the Caucasus region and Peoples of the Caucasus of the Mazandarani people.

Morphology

Like other modern Iranian languages there is no distinction between the dative and accusative cases, and the nominative in the sentence takes almost no indicators but with word order (depending on dialects it may end in a/o/e). Since Mazanderani lacks articles, there is no inflection for nouns in the sentence (no modifications for nouns). For definition, nouns are added with e at end (me dətere meaning The daughter of mine while me dəter means my daughter). The indefinite article for single nouns is a-tā with tā for determination of number (a-tā kijā meaning a girl). There are some remnants from old Mazanderani that female nouns in nominative were ending with a and male nouns in nominative were ending with e (as in jənā meaning the woman and mərdē meaning the man) grammatical gender still exists in other present-day close languages such as Semnani, Sangesari and Zazaki.

Notable postpositions

Adpositions in Mazanderani are after words, while most of other languages including English and Persian have preposition systems in general. the only common postpositions that sometimes becoming preposition are Še and tā. Frequently used postpositions are:

Suffixes

The list below is a sample list obtained from the Online Mazanderani-Persian dictionary.

Orthography

Mazanderani is commonly written in the Perso-Arabic script. However, many use roman alphabets for example in SMS messages.

Vocabulary

Spoken in a territory sheltered by the high Alborz mountains, Mazanderani preserves many ancient Indo-European words no longer in common use in modern Iranian languages such as Persian. Listed below are a few common Mazanderani words of archaic, Indo-European provenance.

Mazandarani is rich in synonyms,some such nouns also retaining the gender they possessed in Indo-European times : for instance the words Miš, Gal, Gerz all have the meaning of mouse, although they are not all of the same gender. While many Indo-Iranian languages use a masculine noun taking such related forms as Muš or Muska or Mušk, in Mazandarani the most commonly used name for the mouse is the feminine noun Gal.

Another example is cow, as most important symbol animal in Indo-European culture, in Mazanderani there are more than 1000 recognized words used for different states of cow, table below is specimen of vocabulary. Even contests hold for knowledge of these words.

Modern-day of Iran

In Iran, there are some popular companies and products, like Rika (son) or Kija (daughter), which take their name from Mazanderani words.

In non-Iranian languages

There are some Mazanderani loanwords in the Turkmen language.

Specimen

áme kεrkā šúnnε nεfār-sar. nεfār-sar xεsέnnε. badími nεfār-sar-e čεl-o-ču hamε bapíssεnε. bāútεmε, “vačε jān! injε, kεlum-e pali, mé-vesse έttā kεrk-kεli dεrεs hā́kεn!” vε εm nεmāšun ke pe dar-biārdε, hamun šō badímε bεmúnε sεre piεr o vačε. ande-tumi piεr o vačε bεmúnε sεre, nεmāz kέrdεnε, qεzā xέrdεnε; ba:d εz nεmāz šínε ún-var, sāāt-e čār harkεt kέrdεnε.

Our chickens go onto the nefār and sleep on it. [Once] we noted that the wood of the nefār was all rotten. I told [my son], “Dear child! Here, next to the stable, make me a chicken coop.” In the evening that [my son] was setting the foundation, the father [-in-law] and [his] son came home. As soon as the father and son came home, they would say their prayers, eat something, and then, after the prayers, they would go over there (to the next room); then at four o’clock they would set off.

(from Maryam Borjian and Habib Borjian, “Ethno-Linguistic Materials from Rural Mazandaran [: Mysterious Memories of a Woman],” Iran and the Caucasus 11/2, 2007, pp. 226–254.)