Deilami

Found in: Languages of Iran Northwestern Iranian languages

The deilami language is local regional dialect of the Persian language, and a member of northwestern Iranian language branch, spoken in Iran's Gilan , mazandaran , ghazvin Province.

Within the deilami dialect, there at least three localized sub-dialects: Galeshi and roudbari and jirandehi and alamouti and khorgami and deilamani and .... The deilami dialect of the Persian is closely related to the tabari dialect of neighboring tabari Province, and the two languages have similar vocabularies. The western and eastern dialects are separated by the Sefid River (Rud-e Sefid). According to Ethnologue, there were more than 3-4 million native speakers of deilami in 1993 .

deilami also shares many features and structures with Zazaki, now spoken in Turkey and the Talysh language. There are somegrammatical differences between Gilaki and standard Persian, especially in possessive and adjectives. Unlike Persian, most possessives and adjectives precede the head noun, similar to English. "Languages" Encyclopaedia Iranica

Example for noun-noun possessives in deilami: mhini jeghelan (Maehin's children) (Baece-ha-ye Maehin in Persian), Baghi gulan (garden flowers) (Gol-ha-ye Bag in Persian).

Example for adjectival modification: deilami: pilla jeghelan (big children), Surx gul (red flower). Eastern Gilaki: Srd aw (cold water) (b-e saerd in Persian), kul caqu (sharp knife) (caqu-ye Tiz in Persian).

Some deilami words

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Comparison of deilami and Kurdish

The consonants are:

**deilami Consonants**
	labial	alveolar	post-alveolar	velar	glottal
voiceless stops
voiced stops
voiceless fricatives
voiced fricatives
nasals
liquids		,
glides

Verb system

The verb system of deilami is very similar to that of Persian. All infinitives end in -tn/-dn, or in -V:n, where V: is a long vowel (from contraction of an original *-Vdn). The present stem is usually related to the infinitive, and the past stem is just the infinitive without -n or -n (in the case of vowel stems).

Present tenses

From the infinitive din, "to see", we get present stem din-.

Present indicative

The present indicative is formed by adding the personal endings to this stem:

Present subjunctive

The present subjunctive is formed with the prefix bi-, bu-, or b- (depending on the vowel in the stem) added to the indicative forms. Final /e/ neutralizes to // in the 3rd singular and the plural invariably lacks final /i/.

The negative of both the indicative and the subjunctive is formed in the same way, with n- instead of the b- of the subjunctive.

Past tenses

Preterite

From xurdn, "to eat", we get the perfect stem xurd. To this are added unaccented personal endings and the unaccented b- prefix (or accented n- for the negative):

Imperfect

The imperfect is formed with what was originally a suffix -i:

Pluperfect

The pluperfect is paraphrastically formed with the verb bon, "to be", and the past participle, which is in turn formed with the perfect stem+ (which can assimilate to become i or u). The accent can fall on the last syllable of the participle or on the stem itself:

Past subjunctive

A curious innovation of Western Gilaki is the past subjunctive, which is formed with the (artificial) 'imperfect of bon+past participle':

This form is often found in the protasis and apodosis of unreal conditions, e.g., mn ag kbra bide bim, xushal bubosti bim, "If I were to see/saw/had seen Akbar, I would be happy".

Progressive

There are two very common paraphrastic constructions for the present and past progressives. From the infinitive son, "to go", we get:

Present progressive

Past progressive

Compound verbs

There are many compound verbs in deilami, whose forms differ slightly from simple verbs. Most notably, bV- is never prefixed onto the stem, and the negative prefix nV- can act like an infix -n-, coming between the prefix and the stem. So from fagiftn, "to get", we get present indicative fagirm, but present subjunctive fagirm, and the negative of both, faangirm or fanigirm. The same applies to the negative of the past tenses: fangiftm or fanigiftm.

Nouns, cases and postpositions

Gilaki employs a combination of quasi-case endings and postpositions to do the work of many particles and prepositions in English and Persian.

Cases

There are essentially three "cases" in deilami, the nominative , the genitive, and the (definite) accusative. The accusative form is often used to express the simple indirect object in addition to the direct object. A noun in the genitive comes before the word it modifies. These "cases" are in origin actually just particles, similar to Persian ra.

Nouns

For the word "per", father, we have:

The genitive can change to -i, especially before some postpositions.

Pronouns

The 1st and 2nd person pronouns have special forms:

The 3rd person (demonstrative) pronouns are regular: /un/, /u.an/, /i.an/

Postpositions

With the genitive can be combined many postpositions. Examples:

The personal pronouns have special forms with "-re": mere, tere, etc.

Adjectives

Gilaki adjectives come before the noun they modify, and may have the genitive "case ending" -/-i. They do not agree with the nouns they modify.