Zazaish Zazaki
Spoken in:	Turkey Georgia Kazachstan Iran
Region:	Eastern Anatolia (Bingöl, Elazığ, Tunceli, Diyarbakır, Erzincan, Erzurum, Sivas, Gümüşhane, and Adıyaman provinces.)
Total speakers:	1.5–2 million
Language family:	Indo-European  Indo-Iranian   Iranian    Western     Northwestern      Zaza-Gorani       Zazaish
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	ira
ISO/DIS 639-3:	either: diq — Dimli (Southern Zazaki) kiu — Kirmanjki (Northern Zazaki)
The region where Zazaki is spoken in Turkey.
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English- based pronunciation key.

Zazaki (Zazaish) is a language spoken by Zazas in eastern Anatolia (Turkey). According to Ethnologue, the Zazaki language is a part of the northwestern group of the Iranian section of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family. The US State Department "Background Note" lists Zaza as one of the major languages of Turkey, along with Turkish (official), Kurdish, Armenian, Greek, and Arabic. [1]. However, Britannica list Zazaki as a subdialect of Kurdish language [2]. The Republic of Kazakhstan or Kazakhstan (Kazakh: Қазақстан, Qazaqstan, IPA ; Russian: Казахстан, Kazakhstán, IPA ), also spelled Kazakstan, is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of Asia. ... Map showing the location of Bingöl Province Bingöl is a province of Turkey in Eastern Anatolia. ... shows the Location of the Province Elazığ Elazığ Province is a province of Turkey with its seat in the city of Elazığ. This province is also the source of the Euphrates river. ... Shows the Location of the Province Tunceli Tunceli is a province in eastern Turkey. ... shows the Location of the Province Diyarbakır Diyarbakır is a province in eastern Turkey. ... Erzincan Province is a province on the Eastern region of Anatolia, and home to Erzincan, a city which was destroyed and rebuilt after a 7. ... shows the Location of the Province Erzurum Erzurum (or Erzerum, Arzen in antiquity, Karin in ancient Armenian, Theodosiupolis or Theodosiopolis during Byzantine rule) is one of the Provinces of Turkey, in the Eastern Anatolia Region, to the east of the country. ... Shows the Location of the Province Sivas The province of Sivas is located at the eastern part of the Central Anatolian region of Turkey. ... Gumushane (Turkish Gümüşhane) is a province in north Turkey, bordering Bayburt to the East, Trabzon, to the North, Giresun and Erzincan to the west. ... Map showing the location of Adıyaman Province in the Kurdish region of Turkey Adıyaman is a province in south-central Turkey. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred languages and dialects (443 according to the SIL estimate), including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many in Southwest Asia, Central Asia and Southern Asia. ... The Indo-Iranian languages are the language links between India and Iran. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code Twenty-two of the languages have two three-letter codes: a code for bibliographic use (ISO 639-2/B) a code for terminological use (ISO 639-2/T). ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... Image File history File links Zaza_Map. ... Image File history File links Zaza_Map. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The region where Zazas live in Turkey The Zazas are an ethnic minority in eastern Anatolia region of Turkey. ... Asia Minor lies east of the Bosporus, between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. ... Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages primarily to provide the speakers with native language biblical texts. ... Indo-Iranian can refer to: The Indo-Iranian languages The prehistoric Indo-Iranian people, see Aryan This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred languages and dialects (443 according to the SIL estimate), including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many in Southwest Asia, Central Asia and Southern Asia. ... Kurdish (Kurdî) is an Indo-Iranian language spoken in the region loosely called Kurdistan, including Kurdish populations in parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. ... The Arabic language (Arabic: ‎ translit: ), or simply Arabic (Arabic: ‎ translit: ), is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. ... Kurdish (Kurdî) is an Indo-Iranian language spoken in the region loosely called Kurdistan, including Kurdish populations in parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. ...

Zazaki dialects and regional variants

There are there main Zazaki dialects:

• Northern Zazaki [3]:

It is spoken in Tunceli, Erzincan, Erzurum, Sivas, Gumushane, Mus (Varto), Kayseri (Sariz) proviences.

Sub-dialects are:

• • West-Dersim
  • East-Dersim
  • Varto
  • Border Dialects like Sarız, Koçgiri (Giniyan-idiom)

• Central Zazaki: It is spoken in Elazig, Bingol, Diyarbakir proviences.

Sub-dialects are:

• • Bingol
  • Palu
  • Border Dialects like Hani, Kulp, Lice, Ergani, Piran

• Southern Zazaki [4]:

It is spoken Sanliurfa (Siverek), Diyarbakir (Cermik, Egil), Adiyaman, Malatya proviences.

Sub-dialects are:

• • Siverek
  • Cermik, Gerger
  • Border Dialects like Mutki and Aksaray

Zazaki literature and broadcast programs

The first written statements in the Zazaki language were compiled by the linguist Peter Lerch in 1850. Two other important documents are the religious writings (Mewlıd) of Ehmedê Xasi of 1899, and of Usman Efendiyo Babıc (published in Damascus in 1933); both of these works were written in the Arabic alphabet. Damascus by night, pictured from Jabal Qasioun; the green spots are minarets Damascus (Arabic: ‎ translit: Also commonly: الشام ash-Shām) is the capital and largest city of Syria. ...

The use of the Latin alphabet to write Zazaki became popular only in the diaspora in Sweden, France and Germany at the beginning of the 1980s. This was followed by the publication of magazines and books in Turkey, particularly in Istanbul. The efforts of Zaza intellectuals to advance the comprehensibility of their native language by alphabetizing were not fruitless: the number of publications in Zaza has multiplied. The rediscovery of the native culture by Zaza intellectuals not only caused a renaissance of Zaza language and culture, it also triggered feelings among younger generations of Zazas (who, however, rarely speak Zaza as a mother tongue) in favor of this modern Western use of the Zaza language, rekindling their interest in their ancestral language. The diaspora, has also generated a limited amount of Zaza-language broadcasting. Moreover, after restrictions were removed on local languages in Turkey during their move toward accession to the European Union, the state-owned TRT television lanched a Zazaki TV program and a radio program on Fridays. The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... Satellite image of Istanbul and the Bosphorus Istanbul (Turkish: Ä°stanbul) is Turkeys largest city, and its cultural and economic center. ... TRT is a TLA that may stand for: Tactical rescue training Tactical response team Tahoe Rim Trail TANSTAAFL Research and Trading (trt. ...

Comparison between Zazaki, Persian, Kurdish, English, and Turkish

Controversy over classification

As with many other languages in the region, the exact positioning of Zazaki in terms of language families is controversial; it parallels a similar controversy about the relationship of the various ethnic groups and is politically fraught. Ethnologue favors the following hierarchy: [5] Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages primarily to provide the speakers with native language biblical texts. ...

• Northwestern Iranian languages
  • Kurdish language
    • Kurmanji language
    • other sublanguages/dialects of Kurdish
  • Zaza-Gorani language group
    • Dimli/Zazaki
    • Gorani

Linguists connect the word Dimli with the Daylamites in the Alborz Mountains near the shores of Caspian Sea in Iran and believe that the Zaza have migrated from Daylamestan towards the west. Zazaki shows many connections the Iranian dialects of the Caspian region. This article deals with the linguistic family of the Iranian languages, a sub-branch of the Indo-European languages. ... Kurdish (Kurdî) is an Indo-Iranian language spoken in the region loosely called Kurdistan, including Kurdish populations in parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. ... The Kurdish languages or Kurdish dialects, belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, are spoken in the region loosely called Kurdistan including Kurdish populations in parts of Iran (Persia), Iraq, Syria and Turkey. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Gorani, sometimes also called Hewrami, the dialect of a small group of Kurds in the province of Kermanshah, Iran and in the Hewraman mountains between Iran and Iraq. ... Alborz Mountains underneath clouds seen from Tehran Alborz (in Persian البرز), also written as Alburz or Elburz, is a mountain range in northern Iran, stretching from the borders of Armenia in the north-west to the southern end of the Caspian Sea, where also Tehran and Irans highest peak, Damavand... Caspian Sea viewed from orbit The Caspian Sea is a landlocked endorheic sea between Asia and Europe (European Russia). ... Zaza may refer to: The Zaza people, an ethnic group in Eastern Anatolia (Southeastern Turkey). ... This article deals with the linguistic family of the Iranian languages, a sub-branch of the Indo-European languages. ...

The language differs from most Persian dialects in that it contains archaic strains of Hurrian; it has this in common with the languages Auramani (Hawrami or Gorani) and Bajelani, and these languages are put together in the Zaza-Gorani language group, but also Goran-Zazaistan by those who want emphasize their distinctness from the Kurds. Hurrian is a conventional name for the language of the Hurrians, a people who entered northern Mesopotamia around 2300 BC and had mostly vanished by 1000 BC. // Language interrelations Hurrian is an agglutinative language which belongs to neither the Semitic nor the Indo-European language families. ... auramani is very ancient language. ... Gorani could be the name of: Gorani, (a. ... Gorani could be the name of: Gorani, (a. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

Hawrami and Bajelani are spoken in region of northern Iraq sometimes referred to as Southern Kurdistan. Hurrian itself is extinct; however it is thought to have had a close relationship to modern Chechen and was a member of the Alarodian language family. On the other hand, the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies (CAIS) lists Zazaki as a dialect of Kurdish language [6]. Kurdistan (literally meaning the land of Kurds)[1] is the name of a geographic region and a cultural region in Middle East inhabited predominantly by Kurds. ... The Chechen language has about 1,200,000 speakers, most of whom live in Russia. ... The Alarodian languages are a proposed language family that encompasses two language families of the Caucasus: Northeast or Dagestan (sometimes called Avar or Lezgian which are also the names of its most major members) and North-central or Vaynakh (which includes Chechen and Ingush), as well as the extinct Hurro_Urartian... Kurdish (Kurdî) is an Indo-Iranian language spoken in the region loosely called Kurdistan, including Kurdish populations in parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. ...

Some linguistic studies on Zazaki (Zazaish)

• Paul, Ludwig. (1998) "The Position of Zazaki Among West Iranian languages" University of Hamburg,[7].

• Lynn Todd, Terry. (1985) "A Grammar of Dimili" University of Michigan,[8].

• Gippert, Jost. (1996) "Historical Development of Zazaki" Frankfurt University,[9].

• Gajewski, Jon. (2003) "Evidentiality in Zazaki" Massachusetts Institute of Technology,[10].

• Gajewski, Jon. (2004) "Zazaki Notes" Massachusetts Institute of Technology,[11].

• Larson, Richard. and Yamakido, Hiroko. (2006) "Zazaki as Double Case-Marking" Stony Brook University and University of Arizona,[12].

• Iremet, Faruk. (1996) "The difference between Zaza, Kurdish and Turkish" Stockholm, Sweden,[13].

References

• Raymond Gordon, Jr., Editor. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Fifteenth Edition. (Classification of Zazaki Language.)

• Paul, Ladwig. (1998) The Position of Zazaki Among West Iranian languages. (Classification of Zazaki Language.)

• Bozdağ, Cem and Üngör, Uğur. Zazas and Zazaki. (Zazaki Literature.)

• Blau, Gurani et Zaza in R. Schmitt, ed., Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, Wiesbaden, 1989, ISBN 3882264136, pp. 336-40 (About Daylamite origin of Zaza-Guranis)

External links

• Dimli (on the Ethnologue site)
• Kirmanjki (on the Ethnologue site)
• Academic Research Center of Zazaki - (In several languages, including English)
• Zaza Language & Culture (In Zazaki, Turkish, English, and German)
• ZazaPress (In Zazaki, Turkish, English and Swedish)
• Iremet Publishing (In Zazaki, Turkish and Swedish)
• Zazaki Language Institute (In German, Zazaki, and Turkish)
• Ethnic Differentiation among the Kurds: Kurmancî, Kizilbash and Zaza
• MIT OpenCourseWare online course in Zazaki