Persian dialects in Khuzestan
There are a number of Khuzestani Persian dialects and accents unique to the province of Khuzestan in southwestern Iran.
There are two main regional classifications, in addition to less common varieties:
Northern region
- Shushtari (dialect)
- Dezfuli (dialect)
- Bakhtiary (dialect)
- Luri (dialect)
- Laki (dialect)
- Gotvandi (dialect)
These are generally somewhat unintelligible to speakers of Modern Standard Persian and are related to and are rooted in old Persian.
Southern region
- Behbahani (dialect)
- Ramhormozi (dialect)
- Hendijani (dialect)
- Abadani (accent)
- Ahvazi (accent) [note orphaned article at Ajami dialect may be this]
- Mahshahri (dialect)
- Khorramshahri (accent)
- Qanavati (dialect)
- Larki (dialect)
- Bahmeei (dialect)
Those regional variety of Kouzestani accents are much closer to Standard Persian than Khouzestani dialects and are easily understood by the average Persian-speaker elsewhere in Iran.
Phonology
Persian dialects of Khuzestan are halfway between north Iranian dialects and Dari dialects, or midway between Modern and Classical Persian dialects.
- Word-final [æ] in Classical Persian is allophonized to [e], except [næ] ('no').
- The long vowels of Classical Persian [eː] and [iː] merged into Modern Persian [iː], and [oː] and [uː] merged into [uː].
- Arabic letter و is realized as a voiced labiodental fricative [v].
- The convergence of the Arabic pronunciations of ق (voiced uvular stop [ɢ]) and غ (voiced velar fricative [ɣ]) in Tehrani Persian and other north Iranian dialects (probably influenced by Turkic languages like Azeri and Turkmen),[1] is still kept separate in Khuzestani dialects, as is in classic Persian and as all southern Iranian dialects are, most partly because of the Arab Iranian population of Khuzestan.
- Like Tehrani accent and also most of the accents in Central and Southern Iran, the sequence /ɒn/ in the colloquial dialect is nearly always pronounced [un]. The only common exceptions are high prestige words, such as [ɢoɾʔɒn] ('Qur'an'), and [ʔiˈɾɒn] ('Iran'), and foreign nouns (both common and proper), like the Spanish surname Beltran [belˈtɾɒn], which are pronounced as written. A few words written as /ɒm/ are pronounced [um]. /ɒm/ and /ɒn/ are pronounced as they are in formal dialect.
Note that native Khuzestani Persian speakers can interchange colloquial and formal dialects in conversational speech.
References
- A. Pisowicz, Origins of the New and Middle Persian phonological systems (Cracow 1985), p. 112-114, 117.