Zaza or Zazaki (), is an

Iranian language The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau. The Iranian languages are groupe ...

spoken primarily in eastern

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula ...

by the Zazas. The language is a part of the Zaza–Gorani language group of the northwestern group of the

Iranian Iranian may refer to: * Iran, a sovereign state * Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran * Iranian lan ...

branch. The glossonym Zaza originated as a pejorative and many Zazas call their language Dimlî. While Zaza is linguistically more closely related to Gorani, Gilaki, Talysh, Tati, Mazandarani and the Semnani language, Kurdish has had a profound impact on the language due to centuries of interaction, which have blurred the boundaries between the two languages. This and the fact that Zaza speakers are identified as ethnic

Kurds ug:كۇردلار Kurds ( ku, کورد ,Kurd, italic=yes, rtl=yes) or Kurdish people are an Iranian peoples, Iranian ethnic group native to the mountainous region of Kurdistan in Western Asia, which spans southeastern Turkey, northwestern Ir ...

by some scholars, has encouraged many linguists to classify the language as a Kurdish dialect., "Bu program ortaokul 5, 6, 7, ve 8. sınıflar seçmeli Kürtçe dersinin ve Kürtçe’nin iki lehçesi Kurmancca ve Zazaca için müşterek olarak hazırlanmıştır. Program metninde geçen “Kürtçe” kelimesi Kurmancca ve Zazaca lehçelerine birlikte işaret etmektedir."Prof. Dr. Kadrî Yildirim & Yrd. Doç. Dr. Abdurrahman Adak & Yrd. Doç. Dr. Hayrullah Acar & Zülküf Ergün & Îbrahîm Bîngol & Ramazan Pertev
Kurdî 5 – Zazakî, Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı, 2012
According to

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensi ...

, Zaza is spoken by around three to four million people. Nevins, however, puts the number of Zaza speakers between two and three million.

History

Writing in Zaza is a recent phenomenon. The first literary work in Zaza is ''Mewlîdu'n-Nebîyyî'l-Qureyşîyyî'' by Ehmedê Xasi in 1899, followed by the work ''Mawlûd'' by Osman Efendîyo Babij in 1903. As the Kurdish language was banned in Turkey during a large part of the Republican period, no text was published in Zaza until 1963. That year saw the publication of two short texts by the Kurdish newspaper ''Roja Newe,'' but the newspaper was banned and no further publication in Zaza took place until 1976, when

periodicals A periodical literature (also called a periodical publication or simply a periodical) is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar example is a newspaper, but a magazine or a journal are also exampl ...

published a few Zaza texts. Modern Zaza literature appeared for the first time in the journal ''Tîrêj'' in 1979 but the journal had to close as a result of the 1980 coup d'état. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, most Zaza literature was published in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

and especially

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...

until the ban on the Kurdish language was lifted in Turkey in 1991. This meant that newspapers and journals began publishing in Zaza again. The next book to be published in Zaza (after ''Mawlûd'' in 1903) was in 1977, and two more books were published in 1981 and 1986. From 1987 to 1990, five books were published in Zaza. The publication of books in Zaza increased after the ban on the Kurdish language was lifted and a total of 43 books were published from 1991 to 2000. As of 2018, at least 332 books have been published in Zaza. Due to the above-mentioned obstacles, the standardization of Zaza could not have taken place and authors chose to write in their local or regional Zaza variety. In 1996, however, a group of Zaza-speaking authors gathered in

Stockholm Stockholm () is the capital and largest city of Sweden as well as the largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.6 million in the urban area, and 2.4 million in the metropo ...

and established a common alphabet and orthographic rules which they published. Some authors nonetheless do not abide by these rules as they do not apply the orthographic rules in their oeuvres. In 2009, Zaza was classified as a vulnerable language by

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...

. The institution of Higher Education of Turkey approved the opening of the Zaza Language and Literature Department in Munzur University in 2011 and began accepting students in 2012 for the department. In the following year, Bingöl University established the same department.

TRT Kurdî TRT Kurdî is the first national television station that broadcasts in Kurdish dialect of Kurmanji and in Zazaki. On the channels sixth anniversary it changed its name from TRT 6 into TRT Kurdi. The channel has been mostly met with criticism fr ...

also broadcast in the language. Some TV channels which broadcast in Zaza were closed after the 2016 coup d'état attempt.

Dialects

There are two main Zaza dialects: * Northern Zaza: It is spoken in Tunceli, Erzincan, Erzurum, Sivas, Gumushane, Mus, Kayseri provinces. Its subdialects are: :*West- Dersim :* East- Dersim, Varto,

Hınıs Hınıs ( ku, Xinûs, hy, Խնուս, ''Khnus'') is a town and district of Erzurum Province in the Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. The population is 9,792 (as of 2010). Historical monuments in the town include the castle and the Ulu Cami Mosqu ...

Sarız Sarız, formerly known as Sáros (Greek: Σάρος), is a town and district of Kayseri Province in the Central Anatolia region of Turkey. The mayor is Baki Bayrak ( MHP). History The history of the district goes back to ancient times, to 700 BC ...

, Koçgiri * Southern Zaza: It is spoken in primarily Bingöl, Çermik, Dicle, Eğil, Gerger, Palu and Hani, Turkey. Its subdialects are: * Sivereki, Kori, Hazzu, Motki, Dumbuli, Eastern/Central Zazaki, Dersimki. Zaza shows many similarities with Kurmanji Kurdish: * Similar personal pronouns and use of these *

Enclitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...

use of the letter "u" * Very similar ergative structure * Masculine and feminine ezafe system * Both languages have nominative and oblique cases that differs by masculine -î and feminine -ê * Both languages have forgotten possessive enclitics, while it exists in such other languages as Persian, Sorani, Gorani, Hewrami or Shabaki * Both languages distinguish between aspirated and unaspirated

voiceless stop In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...

s * Similar vowel phonemes Ludwig Paul divides Zaza into three main dialects. In addition, there are transitions and edge accents that have a special position and cannot be fully included in any dialect group.

Grammar

As with a number of other Indo-Iranian languages like the

Kurdish languages Kurdish (, ) is a language or a group of languages spoken by Kurds in the geo-cultural region of Kurdistan and the Kurdish diaspora. Kurdish constitutes a dialect continuum, belonging to Western Iranian languages in the Indo-European lang ...

, Zaza features

split ergativity In linguistic typology, split ergativity is a feature of certain languages where some constructions use ergative syntax and morphology, but other constructions show another pattern, usually nominative–accusative. The conditions in which ergat ...

in its morphology, demonstrating ergative marking in past and perfective contexts, and nominative-accusative alignment otherwise. Syntactically it is nominative-accusative.

Grammatical gender

Among all Western Iranian languages only Zaza and Kurmanji distinguish between masculine and feminine

grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...

. Each noun belongs to one of those two genders. In order to correctly decline any noun and any modifier or other type of word affecting that noun, one must identify whether the noun is feminine or masculine. Most nouns have inherent gender. However, some nominal roots have variable gender, i.e. they may function as either masculine or feminine nouns.

Phonology

Vowels

A vowel may also be realized as when occurring before a consonant. may become lowered to an when occurring before a velarized nasal ; , or occurring between a palatal approximant and a palato-alveolar fricative . Vowels , , or become nasalized when occurring before , as , , or .

Consonants

becomes a velar when following a velar consonant.

Alphabet

The Zaza alphabet is an extension of the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...

used for writing the Zaza language, consisting of 32 letters, six of which (ç, ğ, î, û, ş, and ê) have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language.

Gallery

IndoEuropeanTree.svg, Partial tree of Indo-European languages. Iranian_tongues_de.svg, Gippert, Jost (1999), Iranische Sprachen / Iranian Languages Iranian_Family_Tree_v2.0.png, Position of Zaza language in Iranian Languages

References

Literature

* Arslan, İlyas. 2016
Verbfunktionalität und Ergativität in der Zaza-Sprache
Dissertation, Universität Düsseldorf. * Blau, ''Gurani et Zaza'' in R. Schmitt, ed., ''Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum'', Wiesbaden, 1989, , pp. 336–40 (About Daylamite origin of Zaza-Guranis) * Gajewski, Jon. (2004) ''"Zazaki Notes"'' Massachusetts Institute of Technology. * Gippert, Jost. (1996
''"Historical Development of Zazaki"''
University of Frankfurt * Haig, Geoffrey. and Öpengin, Ergin
''"Introduction to Special Issue Kurdish: A critical research overview''"
University of Bamberg, Germany * Larson, Richard. and Yamakido, Hiroko. (2006
''"Zazaki as Double Case-Marking"''
Stony Brook University and University of Arizona. * Lynn Todd, Terry. (1985
''"A Grammar of Dimili"''
University of Michigan
Mesut Keskin, Zur dialektalen Gliederung des Zazaki. Magisterarbeit, Frankfurt 2008.
(PDF) * * Paul, Ludwig. (1998)
''"The Position of Zazaki Among West Iranian languages"''
University of Hamburg * Werner, Brigitte . (2007
''"Features of Bilingualism in the Zaza Community"''
Marburg, Germany