Hazaragi dialect
Hazaragi is an eastern variety of Persian that is spoken by the Hazara people, primarily in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan, as well as other Hazara-populated areas of their native living ground of Afghanistan. It is also spoken by the Hazaras of Pakistan and Iran and also by Hazara diaspora living elsewhere. It is mutually intelligible with Dari, one of the two official languages of Afghanistan.
Classification
Hazaragi is an eastern variety of Persian closely related to Dari. Historically it has been classified as a dialect of Persian with significant loanwords from Mongolic and Turkic. It is a member of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family, and is closely related to Dari language, another eastern variety of Persian and one of the two main languages in Afghanistan. The primary differences between Dari and Hazaragi are the accents and Hazaragi's greater array of Mongolic and Turkic loanwords. Despite these differences, they are mutually intelligible.In Daykundi Province, Hazaragi has a significant admixture of Altaic influence in the language via Karluk.
Geographic distribution and diaspora
Hazaragi is spoken by the Hazara people, who mainly live in Afghanistan, with a significant population in Pakistan and Iran, and by Hazara diaspora in eastern Uzbekistan, northern Tajikistan, the Americas, Europe, and Australia.In recent years, a substantial population of Hazara refugees have settled in Australia, prompting the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to move towards an official recognition of the Hazaragi language. Currently, NAATI holds interpreting tests for Hazaragi as a distinct language, noting in test materials that Hazaragi varies by dialect, and that any dialect of Hazaragi may be used in interpreter testing as long as it would be understood by the average speaker. The test materials also note that Hazaragi in some locations has been significantly influenced by surrounding languages, and that the use of non-Hazaragi words assimilated from neighboring languages would be penalized in testing.
History
During the time of king Babur, who came to Afghanistan in the 16th century, some Hazaras spoke the Mongolic language. A distinct Hazara Persian dialect began to emerge amongst the people of the Hazarajat in the late 18th century. According to G. K. Dulling, "they ceased to be Mongolic speakers by the end of eighteenth century at the latest, and were then speaking Tajik of a sort."Persian and Islam
The Persian language became so much part of the religion of Islam that it almost went wherever Islam took roots. Persian entered, in this way, into the very faith and thought of the people embracing Islam throughout South Asia.Timur, though he committed many depredations, was brought up according to the Iranian culture and patronized the learned to such an extent that Samarkand and Herat became seats of Iranian learning.
Similarly, the Ilkhanate Mongol rulers became so involved with Persian that after Iskan Khan, when the Mongols went to the mountains of present Hazarajat, they took the Persian language and Shia Islam with them.
There are some Mongolic-speaking Mongols, mainly in Karez and Kundur between Maymana and Herat, who still speak the Mongolic language that Hazaras do not understand.
Mongolic and Turkic influence
Over time, the Mongolic and Turkic languages died out in Afghanistan as living languages amongst the Hazara people. However, Hazaragi contains a considerable number of Mongolic and Turkic words.According to Dulling, "Grammatically, the Mongolian was probably fairly pure, it contained a certain amount of original language, Persian and its substratum. It would seem, too, that because the long period that separated the initial and final Mongol settlements, the Mongolic language itself was not homogeneous, containing as it did not only Middle Mongol but also modern Mongol elements."
Grammatical structure
The grammatical structure of Hazaragi is practically identical with that of Kabuli and Herati Persian.Phonology
As a group of eastern Persian varieties which are considered the more formal and classical varieties of Persian, Hazaragi retains the voiced fricative, and the bilabial articulation of has borrowed the retroflexes and ; as in buṭ vs. but ; and rarely articulates. The convergence of voiced uvular stop and voiced velar fricative in Western Persian is still kept separate in Hazara.Diphthongs include,, and . The vocalic system is typically eastern Persian, characterized by the loss of length distinction, the retention of mid vowels, and the rounding of and, alternating with its merger with, or .
Stress is dynamic and similar to that in Dari and Tajik varieties of Persian, and not variable. It generally falls on the last syllable of a nominal form, including derivative suffixes and a number of morphological markers. Typical is the insertion of epenthetic vowels in consonant clusters and final devoicing.
Nominal morphology
The most productive derivative marker is -i, and the plural markers are -o for the inanimate and -û for the animate. The emphatic vocative marker is û or -o, the indefinite marker is -i, and the specific object marker is -a. The comparative marker is -tar. Dependent adjectives and nouns follow the head noun and are connected by -i. Topicalized possessors precede the head noun marked by the resumptive personal suffix. Prepositions include, in addition to the standard Persian ones, ḵun ; the latter often replaces ba in dative function. Loaned postpositions include comitative -qati and -worî. Interrogatives typically function also as indefinites.| Singular/Plural | First person | Second person | Third person |
| singular | ma ' | tu ' | e/u ' |
| plural | mû ' | šimû/šumû | yo/wo ' |
| singular | -um ' -em | -it/khu/–tû ' | -iš/-ši ' |
| plural | -mû ' | –tû/-šimû/šumû ' | -iš/-ši |
Particles, conjunctions, modals, and adverbials
These include atê/arê, meaning "yes"; amma or wali, meaning "but"; balki, meaning "however"; šaydi, meaning "perhaps"; ale, meaning "now"; and wuḵt-a, meaning "then". These are also marked by distinctive initial stress.| Hazaragi | Persian/Dari | English |
| Amyale | aknun | now |
| dalil'dera | dalil darad | maybe |
Verb morphology
The imperfective marker is mi-. The subjunctive and imperative marker is bi-. The negation is na-. These usually attract stress.Tenses
The tense, mood, and aspect system is typically quite different from western Persian. The basic tense system is threefold: present-future, past, and remote. New modal paradigms developed in addition to the subjunctives:- The non-seen/mirative that originates in the resultative-stative perfect, which has largely lost its non-modal use;
- the potential, or assumptive, which is marked by the invariant ḵot combined with the indicate and subjunctive forms.
In the assumptive, the distinction appears to be not between present versus past, but indefinite versus definite. Also, similar to all Persian varieties, the imperfective forms in mi-, and past perfect forms, such as mi-zad-um and zada bud-um, are used in irreal conditional clauses and wishes; e.g., kaški zimi qulba kadagi mu-but, "If the field would only be/have been plowed!" Modal verbs, such as tan-, are constructed with the perfect participle; e.g., ma bû-r-um, da čaman rasid-a ḵot tanist-um, "I shall go, and may be able to get to Čaman". Participial nominalization is typical, both with the perfect participle and with the derived participle with passive meaning kad-ag-i, "having been done" šuda-ra mi-ngar-um, "I am looking at a plowed/unplowed field"; imrûz tikrar mu-kun-a, "Today he repeats. The gerundive is likewise productive, as in yag čiz, ki uftadani baš-a, ma u-ra qad-dist-ḵu girift-um, tulḡa kad-um, "One object, that was about to fall, I grabbed, and held it". The clitic -ku or -ḵu topicalizes parts of speech, -di the predicate; as in i-yši raft, ma-ḵu da ḵona mand-um'', "He himself left; I, though, I stayed".