Yaghnobi language

The Yaghnobi language is a living Northeastern Iranian language (the only other living member being the Ossetic), and is spoken in high valley of the Yaghnob River in the Zarafshan area of Tajikistan by Yaghnobi people. It is considered to be direct descendant of Sogdian and in academic literature has often been called Neo-Sogdian. There are between 1,500 and 2,000 Yaghnobi speakers (the speakers are divided into several communities: major group lives in Zafarobod area, than there are re-settlers in Yaghnob valley and some communities live in villages Zumand and Kukteppa and in Dushanbe).

Most Yaghnobi speakers are bilingual in Tajik. Yaghnobi is used mostly 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, western and eastern, which differ primarily in phonetics. For example, to the historical *θ is t in the western dialects and in the eastern there is s, e.g. met - mes (day; from Sogdian mēθ ), and the western ay corresponds to eastern e, i.e. wayš - weš (grass; Sogdian wayš or wēš ); early-Sogdian group θr (later š) is reflected as sar in the east but as tir in the west - i.e. saráy - tiráy (three; Sogdian θrē/θray or šē/šay <δry>). Not only ay/e and t/s are recognised as relevant features to distinguish those two dialects, there are also some differences in verbal endings or in lexicon. In between those two main dialects there is a transitional dialect, that shares some features from the western language and some other from the eastern.

Writing

Yaghnobi was a scriptless language until 1990s, but according to some ethnographers the Yaghnobis used a modified form of the Arabic alphabet. Nowadays the language is transcribed by scholars using a modified Latin alphabet, with the following symbols:

a (á), ā (ā́), b, č, d, e (é), f, g, γ, h, ẖ, i (í), ī (ī́), ǰ, k, q, l, m (m̃), n (ñ), o (ó), p, r, s, š, t, u (ú), ū (ū́), ʏ (ʏ́), v, w (u̯), x, x°, y, z, ž, ع

In recent times Sayfiddīn Mīrzozoda form the Tajik Academy of Sciences uses a modified Tajik alphabet for writing Yaghnobi. This alphabet is quite unsuitable for Yaghnobi - it does not distinguish short and long vowels, the difference v/w or does not mark stress etc. Yaghnobi alphabet follows with Latin equivalents given in parenthesis:

А а (a) Б б (b) В в (v, w) Г г (g) Ғ ғ (γ) Д д (d) Е е (e) Ё ё (yo) Ж ж (ž) З з (z) И и (i, ī) Ӣ ӣ (i, ī) й (y) К к (k) Қ қ (q) Л л (l) М м (m) Н н (n) О о (o) П п (p) Р р (r) С с (s) Т т (t) У у (u, ū, ʏ) Ӯ ӯ (u, ū, ʏ) Ф ф (f) Х х (x) Хв хв (x°) Ҳ ҳ (h, ẖ) Ч ч (č) Ҷ ҷ (ǰ) Ш ш (š) Ю ю (yu, yū, yʏ) Я я (ya) ’ (ع)

Notes to the Cyrillic alphabet:

1) Letter й doos not have capital form, it never appears at the beginning of a word. Words beginning with ya-, yo- and yu-/yū-/yʏ- are written as я-, ё- and ю-; in a similar way are these combinations written in the middle of the word, f.ex. viyóra is виёра [vɪ̆ˈjɔ:ra].

2) The usage of letters ӣ and ӯ is not exactly known, it appears, that those letters can be used to distinguish two similar sounding words by orthography (f.ex. иранка and ӣранка, рупак and рӯпак). Maybe letter ӣ is also used as a stress marker as it is also in Tajik. Letter ӯ can also be used in Tajik loanwords to indicate a Tajik vowel /ů/ [ɵː], but it can have some other usage that is not known yet.

3) In comparison to Tajik, Yaghnobi does not use letters ъ and Э э - instead of Tajik ъ is used Yaghnobi letter ’ and Yaghnobi е covers both Tajik е and э for value /e/.

4) Letter combinations /ye/ and /yi/ are written as йе and йи, but those combinations appear rarely in Yaghnobi (mostly йе is rare). Yaghnobi letters е and и never have a value /ye/, /yi/ as they can have in Tajik.

5) Russian letters Ц ц, Щ щ, Ы ы and Ь ь, that can be used in Tajik loans from Russian are not used in Yaghnobi - the Russian words are written as they are pronounced by the Yaghnobi speakers, not as they are written originally in Russian (f.ex. aeroplane is самолет/самолёт in Russian, written самолёт in Tajik and pronounced [səmʌˈʎot] in Russian and similar in Tajik, in Yaghnobi it is written as самалиёт respecting Yaghnobi pronunciation [samalɪˈjo:tʰ] or [samajlˈo:tʰ]; word concert is borrowed to Yaghnobi from Russian концерт [kʌnˈʦe̠rt] in form кансерт [kʰanˈse:rtʰ]).

Sounds

Vowels

short: i [i-ɪ-e], a [a(-æ)], u [(y-)u-ʊ-o] (all short vowels might be reduced approximately to [ə] in pretonic positions)

long: ī [i:], e [ɛ:(-e:)], ā [a:], o [(ɒ:-)ɔ:(-o:-u:)], ū [u:], ʏ [(u:-)y:(-i:)]

diphthongs: ay [ai̯] (ay in native words appears only in the western dialects, in the eastern it changes to e, ay can also appear in the eastern dialect, but by different etymology), oy [ɔ:i̯], uy [ʊi̯], ūy [u:i̯], ʏy [y:i̯], iy [ɪi̯]; ow [ɔ:u̯], aw [au̯]