Gorani language

Gorani or Hawrami (also Gurani,[3] Kurdish: گۆرانی ,Goranî‎, lit. ''song'')[6] is a Northwestern Iranian language spoken by ethnic Kurds[7] and which with Zazaki constitute the Zaza–Gorani languages.[3] All the Gorani dialects are influenced by Kurdish lexically and morphologically.[7] Gorani is considered a Kurdish dialect by many researchers.[7][8][9][10]

This article is about the Iranian language spoken by Kurds. For the Slavic dialect, see Gorani dialect.
"Gurani language" redirects here. Not to be confused with the Guarani language.

Gorani
گۆرانی
Goranî
Native toIraq and Iran
RegionKurdistan (Primarily Hawraman, also Garmian and Nineveh)
Native speakers
350,000 (2014)[1]
DialectsHawrami
Shabaki[3]
Sarli[3]
Bajelani[4]
Language codes
ISO 639-3hac
Glottologgura1251
ELPGurani[5]
Linguasphere58-AAA-b

Gorani has four dialects: Bajelani, Hawrami, Sarli and Shabaki and is spoken in Iraq and Iran.[3] Of these, Hawrami was the traditional literary language and koiné of Kurds in the historical Ardalan region at the Zagros Mountains,[11][12] but has since been supplanted by Central Kurdish and Southern Kurdish.[13]

Etymology

The name Goran appears to be of Indo-Iranian origin. The name may be derived from the old Avestan word, gairi, which means mountain.[14]

Literature
Main articles: Ardalan § Gorani Culture in Ardalan, and Khana Qubadi

Under the independent rulers of Ardalan (9th–14th / 14th–19th century), with their capital latterly at Sanandaj, Gorani became the vehicle of a considerable corpus of poetry. Gorani was and remains the first language of the scriptures of the Ahl-e Haqq sect, or Yarsanism, centered on Gahvara. Prose works, in contrast, are hardly known. The structure of Gorani verse is very simple and monotonous. It consists almost entirely of stanzas of two rhyming half-verses of ten syllables each, with no regard to the quantity of syllables.

Names of forty classical poets writing in Gurani are known, but the details of the lives and dates are unknown for the most part. Perhaps the earliest writer is Mala Parisha, author of a masnavi of 500 lines on the Shi'ite faith who is reported to have lived around 1398–99. Other poets are known from the 17th–19th centuries and include Mahzuni, Shaikh Mostafa Takhti, Khana Qubadi, Yusuf Zaka, and Ahmab Beg Komashi. One of the last great poets to complete a book of poems (divan) in Gurani is Mala Abd-al Rahm of Tawa-Goz south of Halabja.

There exist also a dozen or more long epic or romantic masnavis, mostly translated by anonymous writers from Persian literature including: Bijan and Manijeh, Khurshid-i Khawar, Khosrow and Shirin, Layla and Majnun, Shirin and Farhad, Haft Khwan-i Rostam and Sultan Jumjuma. Manuscripts of these works are currently preserved in the national libraries of Berlin, London, and Paris.

Dialects

Bajelani

Bajelani is a Gorani dialect[3] with about 59,000 speakers, predominately around Mosul,[15] near Khanaqin and near the Khosar valley.[7]

Hawrami

Hawrami (هەورامی; Hewramî) also known as Avromani, Awromani or Horami, is a Gorani dialect and is regarded as the most archaic one.[16] It is mostly spoken in the Hawraman region, a mountainous region located in western Iran (Iranian Kurdistan) and northeastern Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan). There are around 23,000 speakers, and it was classed as "definitely endangered" by UNESCO in 2010.[17]

Due to concerns with the decline of Hawrami speakers, as people move away from the Hawraman region to cities like Erbil, Jamal Habibullah Faraj Bedar, a retired teacher from Tawela, decided to translate the Qur'an from Arabic into Hawrami. The translation took two and a half months and 1000 copies of the publication were printed in Tehran.[17]

Sarli

Sarli is spoken in northern Iraq by a cluster of villages[18] north of the Little Zab river,[19] on the confluence of the Khazir River and the Great Zab river, just west-northwest of the city of Kirkuk.[20] Many speakers have been displaced by conflicts in the region.[21] It is reportedly most similar to Bajelani[21] but is also similar to Shabaki.[22] It contains Kurdish, Turkish and Persian influences, like its neighbours Bajelani and Shabaki.[23]

Shabak
Main article: Shabak language

Phonology

Consonants
Bilabial Labio-
dental		 Alveolar Post-
alveolar		 Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal
Plosive aspirated pʰ tʰ kʰ q [ʔ]
voiced b d ɡ
Affricate aspirated t͡ʃʰ
voiced d͡ʒ
Fricative voiceless f s ʃ x ħ h
voiced (v) z ʒ (ʁ) (ʕ)
Nasal m n
Lateral plain l
velarized ɫ
Rhotic tap ɾ
trill r
Approximant w j

All voiceless plosives and affricates are aspirated.

  • A glottal stop [ʔ] may be heard before a word-initial vowel, but is not phonemic.
  • Sounds /ʕ ʁ/ only occur in loanwords.
  • /x/ can also be heard as [χ] among different dialects.
  • /q/ can also be aspirated as [qʰ].
  • The voiced /d/ may be lenited in post-vocal positions, and occur as a voiced dental approximant [ð̞]. In the Nawsud dialects, /d/ can be heard as an alveolar approximant sound [ɹ], and may also be devoiced when occurring in word-final positions as [ɹ̥].
  • In the Nawsud and Nodša dialects, a word-initial /w/ can be heard as a [v] or a labialized [vʷ].
  • /n/ when preceding velar consonants, is heard as a velar nasal [ŋ].

Vowels
Front Central Back
Close i u
Near-close ɪ ʊ
Close-mid e o
Mid ə
Open-mid ɛ ɔ
Near-open æ
Open a
  • Sounds /æ ə/ both can be realized as an open-mid [ɛ].[24]

Hawrami Grammar

Nouns
  • Hawrami distinguishes between two genders and two cases; Masculine & Feminine, and Nominative & Oblique. The two cases are otherwise referred to as the Direct and Indirect Cases

Masculine and Feminine, and Nominative and Oblique

Gender distinctions in nouns are indicated by a combination of final stress and vowel/consonant ending. Masculine nouns in the nominative form are indicated by a stressed "-O", -I", "-U", "-A", "-Á" and all consanant endings. Feminine nouns are indicated by an unstressed "-A", "-I", a stressed "-E" and rarely, a stressed "-Á".

There are 6 declensions of which are three masculine declensions, and three feminine declensions. The declensions of each gender will be demonstrated as example

First Declension (Masculine Consonant Ending; Feminine Short Unstressed Vowel Ending)

  • Masculine : Kur (Boy)
  • Feminine : Xátuna (Queen)

Second Declension (Masculine Stressed Short Vowel Ending; Feminine Stressed "-E" Ending)

  • Masculine : Yána (House)
  • Feminine : Námé (Name)

Third Declension (Stressed Long "-A" Ending)

  • Masculine : Osá (Teacher)
  • Feminine : Dagá (Village)

Source[25]

First Declension Masculine Feminine
Nominative Singular -ø -a,-i
Oblique Singular -i -e
Nominative Plural -e -e
Oblique Plural -'á -'á
Second Declension Masculine Feminine
Nominative Singular -'a,-'i,-'o,-'u -'e
Oblique Singular -'ai,-'i,-'oi,-'ui -'e
Nominative Plural -'e,-'e,-o'e,-u'e -'e
Oblique Plural -'á,-'á,-o'á,-,u'á -'á
Third Declension Masculine Feminine
Nominative Singular -'á -'á
Oblique Singular -'ái -'e
Nominative Plural -'e -'e
Oblique Plural -áy'á -áy'á

Note: " ' " indicates syllable followed will be stressed

In Hawrami, definiteness and indefiniteness is marked by two independent suffixes, "-ew", and "-(a)ka". These suffixes decline for case and gender. The indefinite suffix "-ew" is declined by the first declension pattern while the definite suffix "-(a)ka" follows the second declension paradigm

References
  1. Gorani at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/dimli
  3. "Gurani". Iranica Online. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  4. "Bajalan". Iranica Online. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  5. Endangered Languages Project data for Gurani.
  6. Michael M. Gunter (2018). Historical Dictionary of the Kurds. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 127. ISBN 978-1538110508.
  7. Michiel Leezenberg (1993). "Gorani Influence on Central Kurdish: Substratum or Prestige Borrowing?" (PDF). ILLC - Department of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
  8. G. Tavadze (2019). "Spreading of the Kurdish language dialects and writing systems used in the middle east". Bulletin of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences. 13 (1): 170–174. Retrieved 30 April 2020.
  9. Jaffer Sheyholislami (2015). "Language Varieties of the Kurds". Retrieved 30 April 2020. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  10. Hossein Hassani; Dzejla Medjedovic (February 2016). "Automatic Kurdish Dialects Identification". Computer Science & Information Technology ( CS & IT ). pp. 61–78. doi:10.5121/csit.2016.60307. ISBN 9781921987489. Retrieved 30 April 2020.
  11. Chaman Ara، Behrooz. The Kurdish Shahnama and its Literary and Religious Implications. ISBN 1511523492.
  12. "چمن آرا، ب، درآمدی بر ادب حماسی و پهلوانی کُردی با تکیه بر شاهنامه کُردی، جستارهای ادبی سال چهل و چهارم بهار 1390 شماره 172".
  13. Meri, Josef W. Medieval Islamic Civilization: A–K, index. p 444
  14. Peterson, Joseph H. "Avestan Dictionary".
  15. "Bajelani". Ethnologue. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  16. "Avromani". Iranica Online. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  17. Menmy, Dana Taib (31 January 2020). "Teacher translates Quran to save endangered Kurdish dialect". Al-Monitor. Retrieved 3 February 2020.
  18. Bruinessen, Martin Van (1 January 2000). Mullas, Sufis and Heretics: The Role of Religion in Kurdish Society : Collected Articles. Isis Press. p. 20. ISBN 9789754281620.
  19. Division, Naval Intelligence (3 September 2014). Iraq & The Persian Gulf. Routledge. p. 329. ISBN 9781136892660.
  20. Sinor, Denis (1 January 1956). Proceedings of the Twenty-third International Congress of Orientalists, Cambridge, 21st-28th August, 1954. Royal Asiatic Society. p. 178.
  21. "Sarli". Ethnologue. Retrieved 4 March 2017.
  22. Bruinessen, Martin Van (1 January 2000). Mullas, Sufis and Heretics: The Role of Religion in Kurdish Society : Collected Articles. Isis Press. p. 300. ISBN 9789754281620.
  23. Nations, League of; Wirsén, Einar Thure af (1 January 1925). Question de la frontière entre la Turquie et l'Irak (in French). Imprimeries réunies, s.a.
  24. Mahmoudveysi, Parvin; Bailey, Denise (2018). Hawrāmī of western Iran. Geoffrey Haig and Geoffrey Khan (eds.), The Languages and Linguistics of Western Asia: Berlin: DeGruyter Mouton. pp. 533–568.
  25. D. N., Mackenzie (1966). "Hawramani - Luhoni" (PDF).

Textbooks
  • D.N.MacKenzie (1966). The Dialect of Awroman (Hawraman-i Luhon). Kobenhavn.
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