ii. The Baḵtīārī Dialect Baḵtīārī, the dialect and subdialects of the Baḵtīārs in southwestern Iran (between 31° and 34° north…

IRAN vii. Non-Iranian Languages of Iran This entry will discuss the non-Iranian languages spoken in Iran in the course of…

IRAN vii, continued (2) Non-Iranian Languages in Pre-Islamic Iran Of the three known pre-Islamic languages (i.e., Urartian, Kassite, and Elamite)…

IRAN vii, continued (3) Elamite, with a Linguistic Sketch LINGUISTIC SKETCH OF ELAMITE As indicated above, Elamite was spoken in…

IRAN vii, continued (4) Urartian, with a Linguistic Sketch LINGUISTIC SKETCH OF URARTIAN Urartian was most likely the dominant vernacular…

IRAN vii, continued vii(5). Kassite The Kassites (q.v.), Akkadian Kaššu (Balkan, 1954), were mountain tribes probably somewhere in the central…

IRAN vii, continued vii(6) Non-Iranian Languages in Islamic Iran LANGUAGE FAMILIES The non-Iranian languages spoken today in Iran include members…

IRAN vii, continued vii(7). Turkic Languages of Iran In Iran, there are two distinct branches of Turkic: Oghuz Turkic languages…

IRAN vii, continued (8) Semitic Languages of Iran First Aramaic and then Arabic had considerable contact with Iranian languages. Their…

IRAN vii, continued vii(9). Arabic During Sasanian times, several large Arab tribes moved into the Fertile Crescent. Some tribes were…

IRAN vii, concluded (10) Aramaic Aramaic has been documented since the early first millennium B.C.E. The following stages can be…

FĀRS viii. Dialects Oscar Mann (1909, p. XVII) described the linguistic diversity in Fārs as a kind of Babylonian confusion…

JAFR, a term of uncertain etymology (for which, see below) used to designate the major divinatory art in Islamic mysticism…

AFTARĪ, the dialect of Aftar (population about 1,200), located at lat 35°39′ N, long 53°07′ E in the mountains one…

ANĀRAKI, the dialect of Anārak, a town with 2,100 inhabitants in the Bīābānak region northeast of the city of Nāʾīn….

EŠTEHĀRDĪ, the easternmost of the nine Southern Tati (Tātī) dialects, described by Ehsan Yarshater (1962, 1963, 1969a, 1969b, 1970; cf….

DIALECTOLOGY. Introduction. The terms dialect and language overlap. In general, language refers to the more or less unified system of…

CENTRAL DIALECTS, designation of a number of Iranian dialects spoken in the center of Persia, roughly between Hamadān, Isfahan, Yazd,…

CASES, forms and uses, in Iranian languages and dialects. General observations. The term case is used on at least three…

CAMERON, GEORGE GLENN, philologist and his­torian, b. 30 July 1905 in Washington, Pennsylvania, d. 14 September 1979 in Ann Arbor,…

BOIR AḤMADĪ, the largest of the six tribal groups of Kūhgīlūya (q.v.). The name, spelled bwyr, is variously vocalized as…

BEHDĪNĀN DIALECT, a Central dialect spoken by the Behdīnān “the people of the Good Religion,” i.e., Zoroastrianism, who live in, or…

GYPSY ii. GYPSY DIALECTS The languages and dialects popularly called “Gypsy” (< Egipcien < qebṭi “Coptic, Egyptian”) constitute three major...

GYPSY. Gypsies are generally referred to by the term kowli in Persian, seemingly a distortion of kāboli, i.e., coming from…