Mazandarani (Mazanderani: مازِرونی, Mazeruni; also spelled Mazani (مازنی) or Tabari (تبری); also called Geleki[5])[1] is an Iranian language of the Northwestern branch spoken by the Mazandarani people. As of 2021[update], there were 1.36 million native speakers. The language appears to be decreasing, as it is threatened, and due to the majority of its speakers shifting to Iranian Persian.[1] As a member of the Northwestern branch (the northern branch of Western Iranian), etymologically speaking, it is rather closely related to Gilaki and also related to Persian, which belongs to the Southwestern branch. Though the Persian language has influenced Mazandarani to a great extent, Mazandarani still survives as an independent language with a northwestern Iranian origin.[6][7]
Mazandarani is closely related to Gilaki, and the two languages have similar vocabularies.[8] The Gilaki and Mazandarani languages (but not other Iranian languages)[9] share certain typological features with Caucasian languages (specifically the non-Indo-European South Caucasian languages),[9][10][11] reflecting the history, ethnic identity, and close relatedness to the Caucasus region and Caucasian peoples of Mazandaranis and Gilak people.[12][13]: 295
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 Tabari, as the Tabari themselves do.[13]: 289–291
The name Tapuri / Tabari (which was the name of an ancient language spoken somewhere in former Tapuria) is now used in preference to the name Mazandarani by the young.
However, both Gilan and Mazanderan formed part of the state known as Tapuria.
The earliest references to the language of Mazandaran, called Tabari, are to be found in the works of the early Muslim geographers. Al-Muqaddasī (or Moqaisi, 10th century), for example, notes: "The languages of Komish and Gurgan are similar, they use hā, as in hā-dih and hāk-un, and they are sweet [to the ear], related to them is the language of Tabaristan, [similar] save for its speediness."[13]: 291
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.[14]
The rich literature of this language includes books such as Marzban Nameh (later translated into Persian) and the poetry of Amir Pazevari. Use of Mazanderani, however, has been in decline for some time. Its literary and administrative prominence had begun to diminish in favor of Persian by the time of the integration of Mazandaran into the national administration in the early seventeenth century.[15]
Classification
The Mazanderani language is closely related to Gilaki and the two languages have similar vocabularies. In 1993, according to Ethnologue, there were three million native Mazanderani speakers.[16]
The dialects of Mazanderani are Saravi, Amoli, Baboli, Ghaemshahri, Chaloosi, Nuri, Shahsavari, Ghasrani, Shahmirzadi, Damavandi, Firoozkoohi, Astarabadi and Katouli.
The native people of Sari, Shahi, Babol, Amol, Nowshahr, Chalus, and Tonekabon are Mazanderani people and speak the Mazanderani language.[17][18]
Grammar
Mazanderani is an inflected and genderless language.[19] It is SOV, but in some tenses it may be SVO, depending on the particular dialect involved.[20][21]
Typology
Morphology
Just as in 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 may be inferred from word order (depending on dialect 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 take the suffix e (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 exist some remnants of old Mazanderani indicating that, in the nominative case, female nouns used to end in a, while male nouns ended in e (as in jənā meaning the woman and mərdē meaning the man). Grammatical gender is still present in certain modern languages closely related to Mazandarani such as Semnani, Sangesari and Zazaki.
Usage
Function cases
Adjectives
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 become preposition are Še and tā. Frequently used postpositions are:
Suffixes
The list below is a sample list obtained from the Online Mazanderani-Persian dictionary.
Locatives
Subjectives
Phonology
Vowels
/a/ may also range to near-open [æ] or a more back [ʌ]. Allophones of /e,u,o,ɑ/ are heard as [ɪ,ʊ,ɒ]. /ə/ can also be heard as [ɛ] or [ɐ].
Consonants
/w/ appears as an allophone of /v/ in word-final position. /ɾ/ may appear as a voiceless trill in word-final position [r̥]. An occasional glottal stop /ʔ/ or voiceless uvular fricative /ʁ/ or voiced plosive /ɢ/ may also be heard, depending on the dialect.[22][23][24]
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 with Vedic cognates.
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.[vague]
Another example relates to the cow, the most important animal in the symbolism of Indo-European culture: in Mazanderani there are more than 1000 recognized words used for different types of cow. The table below lists some specimens of this rich vocabulary. In Mazandaran there are even contests held to determine those with the greatest knowledge of this bovine nomenclature.
Influences exerted by Mazanderani
Modern-day of Iran
In Iran, there are some popular companies and products, like Rika (boy) or Kija (girl), which take their name from Mazanderani words.[26]
In non-Iranian languages
There are some Mazanderani loanwords in the Turkmen language.[27]
Examples
The following verses are in an eastern Mazandarani dialect spoken in the Caspian littoral in northern Iran. They were transcribed and translated by Maryam Borjian and Habib Borjian.[28]
References
In dates given below, A.P. denotes the Iranian calendar, the solar calendar (365 days per year) which is official in Iran and Afghanistan.
^ a b c d e fMazandarani at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Shahmirzadi at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024)
^"Considerations about the dialect of Alamut district from the northern dialects of Iran". پرتال جامع علوم انسانی.
^Jaafari Dehaghi, Mahmoud; Khalilipour, Nazanin; Jaafari Dehaghi, Shima. Iranian Languages and Dialects Past and Present. Tehran. p. 261.
^Borjian, Habib (16 July 2018). "کاهش توجه به زبان مازندرانی در قرن بیستم" [Decreased attention to Mazandarani language in the 20th century] (in Persian). Islamic Republic News Agency. Retrieved 19 December 2020.
^"ساری | مرکز دائرةالمعارف بزرگ اسلامی". www.cgie.org.ir. Retrieved 2024-03-25.
^Coon, "Iran:Demography and Ethnography" in Encyclopedia of Islam, Volume IV, E.J. Brill, pp. 10,8. Excerpt: "The Lurs speak an aberrant form of Archaic Persian" See maps also on page 10 for distribution of Persian languages and dialect
^Kathryn M. Coughlin, "Muslim cultures today: a reference guide," Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006. p. 89: "...Iranians speak Persian or a Persian dialect such as Gilaki or Mazandarani"
^Dalb, Andrew (1998). Dictionary of Languages: The Definitive Reference to More Than 400 Languages. Columbia University Press. p. 226. ISBN 978-0-231-11568-1.
^ a bNasidze, Ivan; Quinque, Dominique; Rahmani, Manijeh; Alemohamad, Seyed Ali; Stoneking, Mark (2006). "Concomitant Replacement of Language and mtDNA in South Caspian Populations of Iran". Current Biology. 16 (7): 668–673. Bibcode:2006CBio...16..668N. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2006.02.021. PMID 16581511.
^Academic American Encyclopedia By Grolier Incorporated, page 294
^Stilo, Donald L. (1981). "The Tati Language Group in the Sociolinguistic Context of Northwestern Iran and Transcaucasia". Iranian Studies. 14 (3/4): 137–185. doi:10.1080/00210868108701585. JSTOR 4310364.
^"Bilingualism in Mazandaran: Peaceful Coexistence with Persian". CiteSeerX10.1.1.501.9468.
^ a b cBorjian, Habib (2004). "Māzandarān: Language and People". Iran & the Caucasus. 8 (2). Brill: 289–328. doi:10.1163/1573384043076045. JSTOR 4030997.
^Windfuhr, G. L. 1989. New Iranian languages: Overview. In Rüdiger Schmitt, ed., Compendium linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden: L. Reichert. pp. 246–249.
^Borjian, Maryam. 2005. Bilingualism in Mazandaran: Peaceful Coexistence With Persian Archived September 21, 2006, at the Wayback Machine. Language, Communities and Education. Languages, Communities & Education: A Volume of Graduate Student Research. New York: Society for International Education Archived 2011-07-27 at the Wayback Machine, Teachers College, Columbia University. pp. 65–73.
^Mazanderani language at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^Windfuhr, G. L. (1989). "New Iranian languages: Overview". In Rüdiger Schmitt (ed.). Compendium linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden: L. Reichert. p. 490.
^Fakhr-Rohani, Muhammad-Reza. 2004. She means only her 'husband': politeness strategies amongst Mazanderani-speaking rural women. (Conference abstract) CLPG Conference, University of Helsinki, Finland, PDF
^Johanson, Lars. Turkic-Iranian Contact Areas Historical and Linguistic Aspects. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006.
^Csató, Éva Ágnes, Bo Isaksson, and Carina Jahani. Linguistic Convergence and Areal Diffusion: Case Studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005.
^Yoshie, Satoko. 1996. Sārī Dialect. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa. Series: Iranian Studies; 10.
^Shokri, Guiti; Jahani, Carina; Barani, Hossein (2013). When Tradition Meets Modernity: Five Life Stories from the Galesh Community in Ziarat, Golestan, Iran. Uppsala Universitet.
^Borjian, Habib (2019). The Mazandarani Dialect of Kalijān Rostāq. Iranian Studies.
^"language-keyboard.com - language-keyboard Resources and Information". www.language-keyboard.com.
^Nasri-Ashrafi, Jahangir-e (ed.). Farhang-e vāžegān-e Tabarī [A Dictionary of Tabari]. v. 5, p. 5, Tehran: Eḥyā’-ketāb”: 2002/1381 A.P. A comparative glossary containing lexical units from almost all major urban and rural centers of the region of the three provinces of Gilan, Mazandaran, and Golestan. Reviewed in Iran and the Caucasus, 2006, 10(2). Volume 4 contains a Persian-Mazanderani index of approximately 190 pp. Volume 5 includes a grammar of the Mazanderani language.
^Borjian, Habib; Borjian, Maryam (2007). "Mysterious Memories of a Woman: Ethno-Linguistic Materials from Rural Mazandaran". Iran and the Caucasus. 11 (2): 226–254. doi:10.1163/157338407X265469.
Further reading
Borjian, Habib (2006). "The Oldest Known Texts in New Tabari: The Collection of Aleksander Chodzko". Archiv Orientální. 74 (2): 153–171.
Borjian, Habib (2006). "A Mazanderani account of the Babi Incident at Shaikh Tabarsi". Iranian Studies. 39 (3): 381–400. doi:10.1080/00210860600808227.
Borjian, Habib (2006). "Textual sources for the study of Tabari language. I. Old documents". Guyesh-shenâsi. 4.
Borjian, Habib (2008). "Tabarica II: Some Mazanderani Verbs". Iran and the Caucasus. 12 (1): 73–82. doi:10.1163/157338408X326217.
Borjian, Habib (2008). "Two Mazanderani Texts from the Nineteenth Century". Studia Iranica. 37 (1): 7–50. doi:10.2143/SI.37.1.2032296.
Borjian, Habib; Borjian, Maryam (2007). "Ethno-Linguistic Materials from Rural Mazandaran: Mysterious Memories of a Woman". Iran and the Caucasus. 11 (2): 226–254. doi:10.1163/157338407X265469.
Borjian, Habib; Borjian, Maryam (2008). "The Last Galesh Herdsman: Ethno-Linguistic Materials from South Caspian Rainforests". Iranian Studies. 41 (3): 365–402. doi:10.1080/00210860801981336. S2CID 162393586.
Le Coq, P. (1989). "Les dialects Caspiens et les dialects du nord-ouest de l'Iran". In Schmitt, Rüdiger (ed.). Compendium linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden: L. Reichert. pp. 296–312.
Nawata, Tetsuo (1984). Māzandarāni. Asian and African Grammatical Manual. Vol. 17. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa.
Shokri, Giti (1990). "Verb Structure in Sāri dialect". Farhang. 6. Tehran: Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies: 217–231.
Shokri, Giti (1995). Sārī Dialect. Tehran: Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies.
Shokri, Giti (2006). Ramsarī Dialect. Tehran: Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies.
Yoshie, Satoko (1996). Sārī Dialect. Iranian Studies. Vol. 10. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa.
External links
Mazanderani edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Society for Iranian Linguistics. Among other services, archives PDFs of articles from linguistics journals, including those written in Persian.
Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran.
Audio recordings available for Mazanderani
Dictionary of Mazanderani, with translations into Saravi, Baboli, and Amoli dialects