The Western Iranian languages or Western Iranic languages are a branch of the Iranian languages , attested from the time of Old Persian (6th century BC) and Median .
27-796: Balochi ( بلۏچی , romanized: Balòci ) is a Northwestern Iranian language , spoken primarily in the Balochistan region of Pakistan , Iran and Afghanistan . In addition, there are speakers in Oman , the Arab states of the Persian Gulf , Turkmenistan , East Africa and in diaspora communities in other parts of the world. The total number of speakers, according to Ethnologue , is 8.8 million. Of these, 6.28 million are in Pakistan. According to Brian Spooner , Literacy for most Baloch-speakers
54-483: A subject–object–verb ( SOV ) language is one in which the subject , object , and verb of a sentence always or usually appear in that order. If English were SOV, "Sam oranges ate" would be an ordinary sentence, as opposed to the actual Standard English "Sam ate oranges" which is subject–verb–object (SVO). The term is often loosely used for ergative languages like Adyghe and Basque that really have agents instead of subjects. Among natural languages with
81-497: A time–manner–place ordering of adpositional phrases . In linguistic typology, one can usefully distinguish two types of SOV languages in terms of their type of marking: In practice, of course, the distinction between these two types is far from sharp. Many SOV languages are substantially double-marking and tend to exhibit properties intermediate between the two idealised types above. Many languages that have shifted to SVO word order from earlier SOV retain (at least to an extent)
108-579: A belt bought has.") A rare example of SOV word order in English is "I (subject) thee (object) wed (verb)" in the wedding vow "With this ring, I thee wed." SOV languages have a strong tendency to use postpositions rather than prepositions , to place auxiliary verbs after the action verb, to place genitive noun phrases before the possessed noun, to place a name before a title or honorific ("James Uncle" and "Johnson Doctor" rather than "Uncle James" and "Doctor Johnson") and to have subordinators appear at
135-546: A professional setting and by educated folk. The following Latin-based alphabet was adopted by the International Workshop on "Balochi Roman Orthography" (University of Uppsala, Sweden, 28–30 May 2000). a á b c d ď e f g ĝ h i í j k l m n o p q r ř s š t ť u ú v w x y z ž ay aw (33 letters and 2 digraphs) In 1933, the Soviet Union adopted a Latin-based alphabet for Balochi as follows: The alphabet
162-441: A word order preference, SOV is the most common type (followed by subject–verb–object ; the two types account for more than 87% of natural languages with a preferred order). Languages that have SOV structure include Standard Chinese is generally SVO but common constructions with verbal complements require SOV or OSV. Some Romance languages are SVO, but when the object is an enclitic pronoun, word order allows for SOV (see
189-530: Is subject–object–verb . Like many other Indo-Iranian languages, Balochi also features split ergativity . The subject is marked as nominative except for the past tense constructions where the subject of a transitive verb is marked as oblique and the verb agrees with the object . Balochi, like many Western Iranian languages, has lost the Old Iranian gender distinctions. Much of the Balochi number system
216-595: Is identical to Persian . According to Mansel Longworth Dames , Balochi writes the first twelve numbers as follows: Balochi was not a written language before the 19th century, and the Persian script was used to write Balochi wherever necessary. However, Balochi was still spoken at the Baloch courts. British colonial officers first wrote Balochi with the Latin script. Following the creation of Pakistan, Baloch scholars adopted
243-465: Is in SVO word order. Non-finite verbs are placed at the end, however, since V2 only applies to the finite verb: " Ich will etwas über Karl sagen " ("I want to say something about Karl"). In a subordinate clause , the finite verb is not affected by V2, and also appears at the end of the sentence, resulting in full SOV order: " Ich sage, dass Karl einen Gürtel gekauft hat. " (Word-for-word: "I say that Karl
270-601: Is not in Balochi, but in Urdu in Pakistan and Persian in Afghanistan and Iran. Even now very few Baloch read Balochi, in any of the countries, even though the alphabet in which it is printed is essentially identical to Persian and Urdu. Balochi belongs to the Western Iranian subgroup, and its original homeland is suggested to be around the central Caspian region. Balochi is an Indo-European language , spoken by
297-423: Is noted that the stop and glide consonants may also occur as aspirated allophones in word initial position as [pʰ tʰ ʈʰ t͡ʃʰ kʰ] and [wʱ] . Allophones of stops in postvocalic position include for voiceless stops, [f θ x] and for voiced stops [β ð ɣ] . /n l/ are also dentalized as [n̪ l̪] . Difference between a question and a statement is marked with the tone, when there is no question word. Rising tone marks
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#1732772278994324-459: Is still used very frequently. آ، ا، ب، پ، ت، ٹ، ج، چ، د، ڈ، ر، ز، ژ، س، ش، ک، گ، ل، م، ن، و، ھ ہ، ء، ی ے The Balochi Standard Alphabet , standardized by Balochi Academy Sarbaz, consists of 29 letters. It is an extension of the Perso-Arabic script and borrows a few glyphs from Urdu . It is also sometimes referred to as Balo-Rabi or Balòrabi. Today, it is the preferred script to use in
351-505: Is still written in a modified Arabic script based on Persian . In 2002, a conference was held to help standardize the script that would be used for Balochi. The following alphabet was used by Syed Zahoor Shah Hashmi in his lexicon of Balochi Sayad Ganj ( سید گنج ) (lit. Sayad's Treasure ). Until the creation of the Balochi Standard Alphabet , it was by far the most widely used alphabet for writing Balochi, and
378-567: Is used to denote nasalization of the preceding vowel . In addition, /f/ occurs in a few words in Southern Balochi. /x/ (voiceless velar fricative) in some loanwords in Southern Balochi corresponding to /χ/ (voiceless uvular fricative) in Western Balochi; and /ɣ/ (voiced velar fricative) in some loanwords in Southern Balochi corresponding to /ʁ/ (voiced uvular fricative) in Western Balochi. In Eastern Balochi, it
405-591: The Baloch and belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the family. As an Iranian language , it is classified in the Northwestern group . Glottolog classifies four different varieties, namely Koroshi , Southern Balochi and Western Balochi (grouped under a "Southern-Western Balochi" branch), and Eastern Balochi, all under the "Balochic" group. ISO 639-3 groups Southern, Eastern, and Western Baloch under
432-726: The Persian alphabet . The first collection of poetry in Balochi, Gulbang by Mir Gul Khan Nasir was published in 1951 and incorporated the Arabic Script . It was much later that Sayad Zahoor Shah Hashemi wrote a comprehensive guidance on the usage of Arabic script and standardized it as the Balochi Orthography in Pakistan and Iran. This earned him the title of the 'Father of Balochi'. His guidelines are widely used in Eastern and Western Balochistan. In Afghanistan, Balochi
459-673: The Balochi macrolanguage, keeping Koroshi separate. Balochi, somehow near similarity with the Parthian and on the other hand, it has near kinship to the Avestan . There are two main dialects: the dialect of the Mandwani (northern) tribes and the dialect of the Domki (southern) tribes. The dialectal differences are not very significant. One difference is that grammatical terminations in the northern dialect are less distinct compared with those in
486-807: The Khalaj speak a Turkic language . Many of the languages and dialects spoken in Markazi and Isfahan provinces are giving way to Persian in the younger generations. It is to note that the Caspian languages (incl. Adharic ), the central dialects, and the Zaza-Gorani languages are likely descended from a later form of Median with varying amounts of Parthian substrata, whereas the Semnani languages were likely descended from Parthian. Subject%E2%80%93object%E2%80%93verb In linguistic typology ,
513-406: The end of subordinate clauses. They have a weaker but significant tendency to place demonstrative adjectives before the nouns they modify. Relative clauses preceding the nouns to which they refer usually signals SOV word order, but the reverse does not hold: SOV languages feature prenominal and postnominal relative clauses roughly equally. SOV languages also seem to exhibit a tendency towards using
540-452: The examples below). German and Dutch are considered SVO in conventional typology and SOV in generative grammar . They can be considered SOV but with V2 word order as an overriding rule for the finite verb in main clauses , which results in SVO in some cases and SOV in others. For example, in German, a basic sentence such as " Ich sage etwas über Karl " ("I say something about Karl")
567-517: The long vowels. The variety spoken in Karachi also has nasalized vowels, most importantly /ẽː/ and /ãː/ . In addition to these eight vowels, Balochi has two vowel glides, that is /aw/ and /ay/. The following table shows consonants which are common to both Western (Northern) and Southern Balochi. The consonants /s/, /z/, /n/, /ɾ/ and /l/ are articulated as alveolar in Western Balochi. The plosives /t/ and /d/ are dental in both dialects. The symbol ń
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#1732772278994594-669: The properties: for example, the Finnish language (high usage of postpositions etc.) The Ethio-Semitic , Cushitic and Omotic languages generally exhibit SOV order. ተስፋዬ Täsəfayē Tesfaye Subject በሩን bärun the door Object ዘጋው zägaw closed Verb ተስፋዬ በሩን ዘጋው Täsəfayē bärun zägaw Tesfaye {the door} closed Subject Object Verb Tesfaye closed the door. Ayyantu Ayantu Subject buna coffee Object dhugti drinks Verb Ayyantu buna dhugti Ayantu coffee drinks Subject Object Verb Ayantu drinks coffee. Somali generally uses
621-454: The question and falling tone the statement. Statements and questions with a question word are characterized by falling intonation at the end of the sentence. Questions without a question word are characterized by rising intonation at the end of the sentence. Both coordinate and subordinate clauses that precede the final clause in the sentence have rising intonation. The final clause in the sentence has falling intonation. The normal word order
648-483: The script fell out of use. Northwestern Iranian language The traditional Northwestern branch is a convention for non-Southwestern languages, rather than a genetic group. The languages are as follows: Others: There is also a recently described, and as yet unclassified, Batu'i language that is presumably Western Iranian. Extinct Deilami is sometimes classified in the Caspian branch. An Iranian Khalaj language has been claimed, but does not exist ;
675-613: The southern tribes. An isolated dialect is Koroshi , which is spoken in the Qashqai tribal confederation in the Fars province . Koroshi distinguishes itself in grammar and lexicon among Balochi varieties. The Balochi Academy Sarbaz has designed a standard alphabet for Balochi. The Balochi vowel system has at least eight vowels: five long and three short . These are /aː/ , /eː/ , /iː/ , /oː/ , /uː/ , /a/ , /i/ and /u/ . The short vowels have more centralized phonetic quality than
702-524: Was used for several texts, including children's books, newspapers, and ideological works. In 1938, however, the official use of Balochi was discontinued. In 1989, Mammad Sherdil, a teacher from the Turkmen SSR , approached Balochi language researcher Sergei Axenov with the idea of creating a Cyrillic -based alphabet for Balochi. Before this, the Cyrillic script was already used for writing Balochi and
729-399: Was used in several publications but the alphabet was not standardized. In 1990, the alphabet was finished. It included the following letters: The project was approved with some minor changes ( қ , ꝑ , and ы were removed due to the rarity of those sounds in Balochi, and о̄ was added). From 1992 to 1993, several primary school textbooks were printed in this script. In the early 2000s,
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