Moghol (or Mogholi; ) is a critically endangered and possibly extinct

Mongolic language The Mongolic languages are a language family spoken by the Mongolic peoples in North Asia, East Asia, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas and in Kalmykia and Buryatia. The best-known member of this language f ...

spoken in the province of

Herat Herāt (; Dari/Pashto: هرات) is an oasis city and the third-largest city in Afghanistan. In 2020, it had an estimated population of 574,276, and serves as the capital of Herat Province, situated south of the Paropamisus Mountains (''Se ...

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

, in the villages of Kundur and Karez-i-Mulla. The speakers were the Moghol people, who numbered 2,000 members in the 1970s. They descend from the remnants of

Genghis Khan Genghis Khan (born Temüjin; August 1227), also known as Chinggis Khan, was the founder and first khan (title), khan of the Mongol Empire. After spending most of his life uniting the Mongols, Mongol tribes, he launched Mongol invasions and ...

's Mongol army stationed in Afghanistan in the 13th century. In the 1970s, when the German scholar Michael Weiers did fieldwork on the language, few people spoke it, most knew it passively and most were older than 40. It is unknown if there are still speakers of the language,Weiers, Michael. 2003. "Moghol," ''The Mongolic Languages''. Ed. Juha Janhunen. Routledge Language Family Series 5. London: Routledge. Pages 248–264. and it is listed as dormant by Ethnologue. The language has been strongly influenced by Persian in its phonology, morphology and syntax, causing Weiers to state that it has the appearance of a "true Inner Asian

creole language A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable form of contact language that develops from the process of different languages simplifying and mixing into a new form (often a pidgin), and then that form expanding and elaborating into a full-fl ...

Phonology

Moghol's phonology is influenced by Persian. It has a system of six vowel qualities with no length contrast: . /ɦ/ may range between voiced �and voiceless

Script

Historically, the Moghol language was written using the

Perso-Arabic script The Persian alphabet (), also known as the Perso-Arabic script, is the right-to-left script, right-to-left alphabet used for the Persian language. It is a variation of the Arabic script with four additional letters: (the sounds 'g', 'zh', ' ...

. Extant Moghol literature included Islamic texts, poetry, Mogholi-Persian vocabularies, and Mogholi grammars.

Grammar

Moghol grammar shows substantial influence from Persian languages, having borrowed even word classes not found in other Mongolic languages: the parts of speech are nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, prepositions, adverbs and conjunctions. Nouns are marked for number and case. Verbs are marked for person, number, tense-aspect and mood. Adjectives inflect for the comparative and superlative degree with the Persian suffixes -''tar'' and -''tariin'', but not for number and case.

Vocabulary

Pronouns

The Moghol personal pronouns are: The demonstrative pronouns are: * ~ ‘this’ *inat ~ enad ‘these’ *mun ~ munah ‘that’ *munat ~ mutah ~ mutat ‘those’ The interrogative pronouns are: *emah ~ imah ~ imas ‘what’ *ken ~ kiyan ‘who’ *kenaiki ‘whose’ *emadu ~ imadu ~ emaji ~ imaji ~ emagalah ‘why’ *emaula- ‘to do what’ *ked ~ keddu ‘how much’ *keja ‘when’ *oshtin ‘how’ The reflexive pronouns are: * ‘self’ * ‘for oneself’ * ‘self’

Numerals

The Moghol numerals are Janhunen (2003):

Sample

Weiers noted down the following poem by the Moghol poet Abd Al-Qadir.

Another Moghol poem or song of Abd Al-Qadir written in Arabic alphabet (from Weiers):