Kutaisi University
PhD in Philology; Invited Specialist
giorgimuliani@gmail.com
Abstract
Internal Differentiation of the Fereydanian Dialect
The descendants of Georgians resettled in Fereydan (Islamic Republic of Iran) in the seventeenth century have preserved the Georgian language and a sense of Georgian identity to the present day. As noted in the scholarly literature, the speech of the Fereydanian Georgians is not homogeneous. Certain differences can be observed among individual villages, providing grounds for discussing the internal differentiation of the Fereydanian dialect.
The Georgian-speaking villages of Fereydan are grouped around two regional centers: Martqopi (Fereydunshahr) and Torel-Boini. Upper Fereydanian speech encompasses the villages of the Martqopi area—Sibaki, Jaqjaqi, and Chughruti—whereas Lower Fereydanian comprises Torel-Boini and the villages belonging to its district: Dashkesana, Akhcha, Boini, and Toreli. Linguistic differences between the upper and lower villages of Fereydan are both lexical and grammatical in character and have developed over the course of several centuries.
In addition to isolation from the Georgian linguistic environment and contact with languages of different structural types, sociolinguistic factors are also regarded as causes of the heterogeneity of Fereydanian speech, since Georgian communities in different parts of Fereydan developed under differing social conditions.
Among the phonetic features of Lower Fereydanian is the simplification of consonant clusters through the insertion of a vowel within the word. Most commonly, the vowel u appears, while i and other vowels occur more rarely. Other characteristic forms are also attested in Lower Fereydanian, including ჴუმა and ბურუნჯი. In the same variety, certain nouns that ordinarily resist syncope undergo vowel deletion when forming the plural in -ebian, with the stem vowels a and o being lost. The consonant v is also frequently omitted in forms of the third-person possessive pronoun.
Morphological evidence provides further criteria for distinguishing Upper from Lower Fereydanian. One such feature is the ending of the ergative case. In Lower Fereydanian, consonant-stem nouns occur with the ending -mam, whereas Upper Fereydanian generally employs the suffix -ma. In the instrumental case, vowel-stem nouns in Upper Fereydanian are generally preserved without truncation, and the case marker itself is retained in full.
Plural formation also displays regional variation. In the village of Dashkesana, plural forms of nouns take the suffix -eb, whereas in the other villages of Lower Fereydan the form -eib occurs. In Upper Fereydanian, the postpositions -qe(n) and -ti(n) are, as a rule, attached to the extended dative forms of nouns.
Verbal morphology likewise reveals important differences. In Upper Fereydanian, verbs of all types, both transitive and intransitive, take the suffix -es in the imperfect and aorist, a feature considered archaic. In Lower Fereydanian, the suffix -en generally occurs, a form characteristic of the western dialects of Georgian. In Lower Fereydanian, particularly in Dashkesana, certain verbs are attested with the ending -ec, whereas the corresponding forms in Upper Fereydanian have -ed.
Syntactic differences are also evident. In complex constructions, Upper Fereydanian commonly employs the conjunction ro(m), whereas in Lower Fereydanian it is replaced by the borrowed conjunction qe/qi.
Lexical differences between Upper and Lower Fereydanian are equally significant. At the same time, Fereydanian contains numerous linguistic features shared with other dialects of Georgian. This demonstrates that the Fereydanian dialect is an organic part of the Georgian language which, despite centuries of existence outside Georgia, has remained internally connected to its mother language.
Despite the geographically limited distribution of Georgian-speaking settlements in Fereydan and the relatively small number of Georgian speakers living there, substantial lexical, grammatical, phonetic, and intonational differences exist between speakers of Upper and Lower Fereydanian. These differences can be explained by the distinct places of origin of the populations inhabiting the two parts of Fereydan, as well as by their natural geographical separation.
Keywords: Fereydanian speech; Upper Fereydan; Lower Fereydan; internal differentiation.