[edit] History

The origin of the name Tolish is not clear but is likely quite old. The name of the people emerges in early Arabic sources as Al-Taylasân and in Persian as Tâlišân and Tavâliš which are plural forms of Tâliš. Northern Talysh (in the Republic of Azerbaijan) was historically known as Tâlish-i Guštâsbi. Talysh has always been mentioned with Gilan or Muqan. Hamdallah Mostowfi writing in the 1340s calls the language of Gushtaspi covering the Caspian border region between Gilan to Shirvan is called a Pahlavi language connected to the language of Gilan.^[1] Although there are no confirmed records, the language called in Iranian linguistics as Azari can be the antecedent of both Talyshi and Tati. Miller’s (1953) hypothesis that the Âzari of Ardabil, as appears in the quatrains of Shaikh Safi, was a form of Talyshi. That was also confirmed by Henning (1954).^[2][3] In western literature the people and the language are sometimes referred to as Talishi, Taleshi or Tolashi. Generally speaking, the written books and texts concerning Taleshi are rare. However, In the recent decades a scientific and research movement has come about in this old region in poetry, history, literature, etc.

[edit] Geography

In the north of Iran, there are 7 cities that speak Talyshi: Masal, Rezvanshar, Talesh, Fouman, Shaft and Masoleh. However the only city whose people speak exclusively Talyshi is the township of Masal and Masouleh. In other cities, in addition to Talyshi language, people speak Gilaki and Azeri Turkic. In part of the Republic of Azerbaijan, most of the villagers speak Talyshi and people in cities speak Azeri.

Talyshi has been under the influence of Gilaki, Azeri Turkic and Persian. In the south (Taleshdula, Masal, Shanderman and Fumanat) Talyshis and Gilaks live side by side, however there are less evidences that a Talyshi family replace Gilaki with its own language. In this region the relation is more of a contribution to each other's language. In the north of Gilan, on the other hand, Azeri Turkic has replaced Talyshi in cities like Astara after the migration of Turkic speakers to the region since decades ago. However the people around Lavandvil and its mountainous regions has retained the language. Behzad Behzadi, the author of "Azerbaijani Persian Dictionary" remarks that: "The inhabitants of Astara are Talyshis and in fifty years ago (about 1953) that I remember the elders of our family spoke in that language and the great majority of dwellers also conversed in Talyshi. In the surrounding villages, a few were famililiar with Turkic" ^[4]. From around Lisar up to Hashtpar, Azeri and Talyshi live side by side with the latter mostly spoken in small villages. To the south of Asalem the influence of Azeri is nearly disconnected and the tendency is towards Persian along Talyshi in cities. In Azerbaijan republic, Talyshi is less under the influence of Azeri and Russian than Talyshi in Iran is affected by Persian.^[5]. Central Talyshi has been considered the purest of all Talyshi dialects.^[3]

[edit] Classification and related languages

Talyshi belongs to the Northwestern Iranian branch of Indo-European languages. The most related living language to Talyshi is Tati. Tati group of dialects are spoken across the Talysh range in the south-west (Kajal and Shahrud) and south (Tarom)^[3]. That Tatic family should not be mistaken with another Tat family which is more related to Persian. Talyshi also shares many features and structures with Zazaki, now spoken in Turkey and Caspian languages and Semnani of Iran.

[edit] Dialects

The division of Talyshi into three clusters are based on lexical, phonological and grammatical factors.^[6] Northern Talyshi distinguishes itself from Central and Southern Talyshi not only geographically but culturally and linguistically as well. Speakers of Northern Talysh are found almost exclusively in the Republic of Azerbaijan but can also be found in the neighboring regions of Iran, in the Province of Gilan. The varieties of Talysh spoken in the Republic of Azerbaijan are best described as speech varieties rather than dialects. Four speech varieties are generally identified on the basis of phonetic and lexical differences. These are labeled according to the four major political districts in the Talysh region: Astara, Lankaran, Lerik and Masally. The differences between the varieties are minimal at the phonetic ^[7] and lexical level ^[8]. Mamedov (1971) suggests a more useful dialectal distinction is one between the varieties spoken in the mountains and those spoken in the plains. The morphosyntax of Northern Talysh is characterized by a complicated split system which is based on the Northwest Iranian type of accusativity/ergativity dichotomy: It shows accusative features with present stem based transitive constructions, whereas past stem based construction tend towards an ergative behavior.^[9]. In distant regions like Lavandevil and Masouleh, the dialects differ to such a degree that conversations begin to be difficult.^[5]

[edit] Some differences with Northern dialects

The northern dialect has some salient differences with the central and southern dialects, like^[5]:

Alignment variation

The durative marker "ba" in Taleshdulabi changes to "da" in Lankarani and shifts in between the stem and person suffixes:
ba-žē-mun → žē-da-mun

Such a diversification exists in each dialect too, like the case of Masali^[10]

[edit] Phonology and Script

The vowel system in Talyshi is more extended than standard Persian. The prominent differences is the front vowel ü in central and northern dialects and the central vowel ə.^[3]. In 1929, a Latin-based alphabet was created for Talyshi in the Soviet Union. However in 1938 it was changed to Cyrillic-based, but it didn't gain extensive usage on variety of reasons, including political-Stalinist consolidation of socialist nations. Nowadays, the Perso-Arabic script and Azeri Latin are also used respectively in Iran and Azerbaijan.

[edit] vowels