Khorasani Turkic or Khorasani Turkish is an Oghuz Turkic language spoken in the North Khorasan Province and the Razavi Khorasan Province in Iran. Nearly all Khorasani Turkic speakers are also bilingual in Persian.

Geographic distribution

Khorasani Turkic is spoken in the Iranian provinces of North Khorasan near Bojnord and Razavi Khorasan near Sabzevar, Quchan. The Oghuz dialect spoken in Western Uzbekistan is sometimes considered a dialect of Khorasani Turkic.

Dialects

Khorasani Turkic is split into North, South and West dialects. The northern dialect is spoken in North Khorasan near Quchan; the southern in Soltanabad, near Sabzevar; the western, around Bojnord.

Classification and related languages

Khorasani Turkic belongs to the Oghuz group of Turkic languages, which also includes Turkish, Azerbaijani, Gagauz, Balkan Gagauz, Qashqai, Turkmen and Salar. Khorasani Turkic was first classified as a separate dialect by Iranian Azerbaijani linguist Javad Heyat in the book Tārikh-e zabān o lahcayā-ye Türki (History of the Turkic dialects). According to some linguists, it should be considered intermediate linguistically between Azerbaijani and Turkmen, although it is sufficiently distinct not to be considered a dialect of either. It is considered by Turkic scholars to be most closely related to the other Oghuz varieties spoken in Iran, and a close relationship with Turkmen has been disputed on the basis of the comparisons of the core set of agglutinating morphemes. Doerfer and Hesche classify Khorasani Turkic into different branches within the Oghuz languages. According to Robert Lindsay, Khorasani Turkic has four branches: Glottolog lists seven distinct dialects:

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

All vowels have phonemic length distinction. The vowel is rounded to when followed by the vowels, (sho& long (Muxabbat "love" , Insan "human"). On the other hand, short /o/ & all the remaining vowels do not cause this rounding, not even the mid & close vowels /e ø ɯ y/ & their long counterparts. (Yoldaşlık "friendship"). /ɑ/ is always pronounced [ɑ] in plurals (& for some speakers, it is pronounced as such unconditionally)

Morphology

Nouns

Pluralization

Pluralization is marked on nouns with the suffix, which has the two forms and , depending on vowel harmony. As mentioned in the phonology section, plural is never rounded to [ɒ], even when it follows, /oː/ or.

Case

Nouns in Khorasani Turkic take a number of case endings that change based on vowel harmony and whether they follow a vowel or a consonant:

Possession

Possession is marked with a suffix on the possessed noun.

Pronouns

Khorasani Turkic has six personal pronouns. Occasionally, personal pronouns take different case endings from regular nouns.

Verbs

Verbs are declined for tense, aspect, mood, person, and number. The infinitive form of the verb ends in -max.

Examples

Writing system

Khorasani Turkic is not often written, but it may be with the Persian alphabet in the Perso-Arabic script.

Additional resources