Hazaragi dialects

Hazaragi refers to a group of dialects of Dari Persian. Afghan Persian, also known as Dari, is an eastern variety of the Persian language and has many dialects throughout Afghanistan.

Classification

Hazaragi dialects fall under Dari, an eastern variety of Persian. Dari, known as Afghan Persian, is one of the two official Languages of Afghanistan. Persian is a prominent member of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. The Hazaragi dialects of Dari and the standard Kabuli dialect of Dari are mutually intelligible, with the primary differences being accents. In Daykundi, the local dialect of Dari contains some Turkic loanwords via Karluk.
Najib Mayel Heravi about the Hazaragi dialects:
"The Hazaragi dialects of Persian possess some of the most ancient and authentic features of the Persian language, to the extent that features typical of the Persian dialects of the 4th and 5th centuries are all prevalent in this variety. The study of these dialects of Persian in Afghanistan, before it becomes obsolete and foreign, is essential for historical linguistic studies of Persian and for solving problems in the interpretation of ancient Persian texts."

Geographic distribution and diaspora

Hazaragi dialects are mainly spoken by the Hazara people, who are native to and mainly live in Afghanistan.
As part of the larger Afghan diaspora, the Hazara diaspora has led to many Hazara Afghans living, or being born, in Pakistan and Iran. As a result, many Afghan-Pakistanis, and Afghan-Iranians, speak Hazaragi dialects of Dari. Along with the diaspora in eastern Uzbekistan, northern Tajikistan, the Americas, Europe, and Australia.
The influx of Afghan refugees in Iran has caused there to be an estimated total of 399,000 Dari speakers of Hazaragi dialects in the country, as of 2021.

Turkic and Mongolic influences

Some dialects of Dari spoken by Hazaras contain Turkic loanwords. According to Temirkhanov, the Mongolian elements make up 10% of the Hazara vocabulary. An Iranica article on Dari dialects of the Hazaras states that they consist of three linguistic layers: pre-Mongol Persian, with its own substratum; the Mongolian language; and the modern Tajik language, another eastern Persian variety.
According to Efimov, examples of vocabulary in Hazaragi dialects that reflect Turkic influence include ata, kaṭa, qara, kunda, qōš, while words of Mongolic origin include bêri, alaḡa, qulaḡay, xatun, ōɡ̄il. German Iranologist notes that a key distinguishing feature of the Hazaragi dialects are its Turco-Mongolic lexical components, which make up around 10% of their vocabularies. Although the Hazaragi dialects of Dari remain structurally similar to the Kabuli dialect of Dari, this lexical layer is different.

Grammatical structure

The grammatical structure of the Hazaragi dialects of Dari are identical to that of the Kabuli dialect.

Phonology

can also approach the sound or.
Hazaragi dialects contain the voiced fricative, and the labial–velar approximant. Unlike in other Persian dialects, the retroflex stops and are found. The voiceless glottal fricative is often dropped. The convergence of the voiced uvular stop and the voiced velar fricative in Western Persian is treated as separate phonemes in Hazaragi dialects.
Diphthongs include,, and . The vocalic system is eastern Persian, characterized by the loss of length distinction, the retention of mid-vowels, and the rounding of ā and å/''o, alternating with its merger with a'' or û.
Stress is dynamic and same to that in the Kabuli dialect of Dari and Tajik, and are thus not variable. Stress generally falls on the last syllable of a nominal word form, including derivative suffixes and several morphological markers. Typical is the insertion of epenthetic vowels in consonant clusters and final devoicing.
only occurs infrequently and among more educated speakers. can be heard as either a trill or a tap. // can also range to uvular sounds .

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, da ; the latter often replaces ba in dative function. Loaned postpositions include comitative -qati and -worî. Interrogatives typically function also as indefinite.

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 ; amma or wali ; balki ; šaydi ''ale ; and wuḵt-a''. These are also marked by distinctive initial stress.

Hazaragi-Dari	Iranian Persian	English
amyale	aknun	now
dalil'dera	dalil darad	maybe

Verb morphology

The imperfective marker is the prefix mi-, as in the conjugated verb mi-zan-um. The subjunctive and imperative marker is bi-. The negation prefix is na- and is placed before all other prefixes, as in na-mi-zad-um. These typically attract stress.

Tenses

The tense, mood, and aspect systems are 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.

Moreover, all past and remote forms have developed imperfective forms marked by mi-. There are doubts about several of the less commonly found, or recorded, forms, in particular those with ḵot. However, the systematic arrangement of all forms according to their morphological, as well as semantic, function shows that those forms fit well within the overall pattern. The system may tentatively be shown as follows, leaving out complex compound forms such as zada ḵot mu-buda baš-um.
In the assumptive, the distinction appears to be not between present versus past, but indefinite versus definite. Also, similar to all Persian dialects, 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. Modal verbs, such as tan-, are constructed with the perfect participle, e.g., ma bû-r-um, da čaman rasid-a ḵot tanist-um. Participial nominalization is typical, both with the perfect participle, and with the derived participle with passive meaning kad-ag-i 'having been done'. E.g., zimin-i qulba kada-ya, zamin-i qulba šuda-ra mi-ngar-um, imrûz tikrar mu-kun-a. The gerundive is likewise productive, as in yag čiz, ki uftadani baš-a, ma u-ra qad-dist-ḵu girift-um, tulḡa kad-um. The clitic -ku or -ḵu topicalizes the parts of speech, and -di topicalizes the predicate; e.g., i-yši raft, ma-ḵu da ḵona mand-um.