#yaghnobi

[molkolsdal]

Comparison of Eastern Iranian Languages

[zhanteimi]

talaqpo – Jaghnobiology

Czechia, 2014, avant-folk / avant-garde jazz / vocal jazz Wonderful explorations on the bass, tip-toeing, slapping, leaving a delightfully unpredictable path behind it. Fiery, half-drunk violin screeching and stuttering. And then there’s frontwoman Lucie Páchová’s voice, a moaning, angular, half-jazz half-folk amalgamation of far-reaching influences. She even sings about lambs in the Yaghnobi…

[gwendolynlerman]

Writing systems

Cyrillic

The Cyrillic script is named after Saint Cyril, a missionary from Byzantium who, along with his brother, Saint Methodius, created the Glagolitic script. Modern Cyrillic alphabets developed from the Early Cyrillic script, which was developed during the 9th century in the First Bulgarian Empire by a decree of Boris I of Bulgaria. It is thought that St. Kliment of Ohrid, a disciple of Cyril and Methodius, was responsible for the script. The Early Cyrillic script was based on the Greek uncial script with ligatures and extra letters from the Glagolitic and Old Church Slavonic scripts for sounds not used in Greek.

Notable features

Type of writing system: alphabet

Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines

Number of letters: 49 + 12 non-Slavic Cyrillic letters (not all of them are used in every language that uses this alphabet)

Used to write: Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe, Aghul, Akhvakh, Altay, Alyutor, Andi, Archi, Assyrian, Avar, Azeri, Bagvalal, Balkar, Bashkir, Belarusian, Bezhta, Botlikh, Budukh, Bulgarian, Buryat, Chamalal, Chechen, Chelkan, Chukchi, Chuvash, Crimean Tatar, Dargwa, Dolgan, Dungan, Enets, Erzya, Even, Evenki, Gagauz, Godoberi, Hinukh, Hunzib, Ingush, Interslavic, Itelmen, Juhuri, Kabardian, Kalmyk, Karaim, Karakalpak, Karata, Kazakh, Ket, Khakas, Khanty, Khinalug, Khwarshi, Kildin Sámi, Komi, Koryak, Krymchak, Kryts, Kubachi, Kumyk, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Lak, Lezgi, Lingua Franca Nova, Macedonian, Mansi, Mari, Moksha, Moldovan, Mongolian, Montenegrin, Nanai, Nenets, Nganasan, Nivkh, Nogai, Old Church Slavonic, Oroch, Orok, Ossetian, Pontic Greek, Russian, Ruthenian, Rutul, Selkup, Serbian, Shor, Shughni, Slovio, Soyot, Tabassaran, Tajik, Talysh, Tat, Tatar, Tindi, Tofa, Tsakhur, Tsez, Turkmen, Tuvan, Ubykh, Udege, Udi, Udmurt, Ukrainian, Ulch, Urum, Uyghur, Uzbek, Votic, Wakhi, West Polesian, Yaghnobi, Yakut, Yazghulami, Yukaghir, and Yupik (Central Siberian)

Capital and lowercase letters were not distinguished in old manuscripts.

Yeri (Ы) was originally a ligature of Yer and I (Ъ + I = Ы).

Iotation was indicated by ligatures formed with the letter I: Ꙗ (not ancestor of modern Ya, Я, which is derived from Ѧ), Ѥ, Ю (ligature of I and ОУ), Ѩ, Ѭ.

Many letters had variant forms and commonly used ligatures, for example И = І = Ї, Ѡ = Ѻ, ѠТ = Ѿ.

Modern Cyrillic script

[chat-chouage]

i’d like to learn one of the pamir languages or maybe yaghnobi

[possessivesuffix]

Why is the Greek word for ‘rice’ ορυζα?

This obviously comes from the direction of Indo-Iranian. The zeta rules out anything involving Indic proper (Sanskrit vrīhi; likely from earlier *wrīdžʰi or the like). Most of Iranian today has /br-/, apparently borrowed through Middle Persian blnj /brindž/ — but if this is soundlawful from *wr- is not clear to me. The only case I can find of a PIE root with *wr- being continued in Iranian is *wreyḱ- ‘to turn, wind’ (English wry, wriggle; Avestan /wr-/, Parthian and Sogdian rw- (/rʷ-/ or /rVw-/?) > Yaghnobi /rĭw-/, etc.). This gives MPer. lyštk /rištag/, ʼlwys /arwēs/ (both ‘rope’) with different development, but of course these could be loans from some other Iranian variety (esp. since these are derived nouns and seem to show two different developments).

In any case the ‘rice’ word is very likely to be post-PII, and even post-PIr. date would not be a bad bet. But if it had been instantly substituted as /br-/ in non-Avestan dialects, surely we’d expect the same even in Greek. So maybe assuming Old Persian *wr- > Middle Persian /br-/ is still the best option, even if this cannot be demonstrated in native vocab.

Moreover, none of the II or even other South Asian reflexes (Dravidian, for example, has *wariñci) seem to show an /u/ as the root vowel. Is the word new enough in Greek to have been adopted with front /y/ already at onset? If so, then maybe at this stage /or-/ would’ve been the closest match for foreign /wr-/ or /βr-/, due to Greek not having short /u/ (at a suitable stage even: no /u/ at all).

But alternately: Greek initial ῥ [rʰ] only comes from PIE *wr-, *sr- > Proto-Hellenic *wr-, *hr-. Maybe the loan is old enough that these were still clusters (perhaps already merged as *hr- though) and not yet simply a word-initial allophone of /r/. So then the ο- would be prothetic after all, as it first appears, added to a Scythian (?) form that already had undergone *wr- > *r-. The choice of /o/ could be then due to the labial root vowel (whatever its explanation).

Interestingly, does anything really prevent extending the same explanation also to various other prothetic omicrons in Greek? While it seems cases like ὀρεκτός still have to be accounted via *ə₃ < *h₃, maybe cases like ὄνομα ‘name’, ὀρυσσω ‘I dig’ could be maybe also from *ə₁ or *ə₂ with labial coloring to /o/ (and I note that some people already seem to reconstruct ‘name’ with *h₁). I would even note that PIE seems to have multiple cases of *h₃m- versus none of *h₁m-. In principle this could be another position where *ə₁ > /o/ could be considered; also ὀμφαλός ‘navel’ < *əmbʰlo- < *Hm̥bʰlo- < √Hnebʰ- could fall under this.

[paininmyassachusetts]

Yaghnobi seems like an interesting language

[roulloetteviax]

The Yaghnobi decided that it was a punishment from Allah who had sent them to hell on earth. But gradually they accepted their new life of slaves.

[everythingcentralasia]

On the Edge of the Snow - a trailer to a documentary about Yaghnobi people

During 1969 and 1970 the Soviet authorities forcibly deported the entire population of the Yaghnob valley to the cotton plantations in the area of Zafarbod on the northwest border between the Tajik and Uzbek SSRs. The deportation was both politically and economically motivated. The fact that the Yaghnobis’ remote location had allowed them to effectively resist Soviet authority, coupled with the pressing economic need for laborers in the cotton fields motivated the government to force the Yaghnobi people from their mountain homes at gunpoint and fly them by helicopter to grow cotton in irrigated desert land. The population of the Yaghnob valley at that time numbered between three and four thousand. Due to the harsh desert climate with temperatures over 105 degrees Fahrenheit, inadequate housing, lack of sanitary drinking water, and exposure to tuberculosis, between 400 and 700 Yaghnobis died during their first year in Zafarabod. During the first few years some of the Yaghnobi fled back to the Yaghnob valley only to be deported again.

In 1990, the Dushanbe based Council of Ministers passed a resolution to reestablish all villages from which people had been deported. Tajikistan became an independent country in 1991. Since independence, the government of Tajikistan has promoted national awareness of the country’s Sogdian heritage as part of an effort to construct a new national identity. Although the Yaghnobi are now permitted to return to live in the Yaghnob valley, only about three hundred have done so since all of the homes had been destroyed and the valley is completely lacking any kind of infrastructure or economic base. About 6,500 Yaghnobis remain in Zafarabod, the largest Yaghnobi population center. 

Source

[chingizhobbes]

Yaghnobi child, Tajikistan.

[everythingcentralasia]

Yaghnobi people from the Yaghnob Valley, Tajikistan (x)

Yaghnobis are considered to be descendants of the ancient Sogdians who once inhabited most of Central Asia beyond the Amu Darya River. They speak the Yaghnobi language, a living Eastern Iranian language considered to be a direct descendant of Sogdian and has often been called Neo-Sogdian in academic literature. The estimated number of Yaghnobi people is approximately 25,000. (x)

Read More

[everythingcentralasia]

Yaghnob Valley, Tajikistan (x)

The valley is home to the Yaghnobi people, a people directly descended from the ancient Sogdian civilization of Central Asia. Due to its natural isolation and limited infrastructure access, the people of Yaghnob Valley have been able to preserve their distinct lifestyle, culture and language, Yaghnobi, which is closely related to ancient Sogdian. Pre-Islamic beliefs and customs are still found in the valley today. Currently, the valley comprises approximately ten settlements, each housing between three and eight families. (x)

[everythingcentralasia]

Inside a typical mud brick house in the Yaghnob Valley of Tajikistan (x)

The valley is home to the Yaghnobi people, a people directly descended from the ancient Sogdian civilization of Central Asia. Due to its natural isolation and limited infrastructure access, the people of Yaghnob Valley have been able to preserve their distinct lifestyle, culture and language, Yaghnobi, which is closely related to ancient Sogdian. Pre-Islamic beliefs and customs are still found in the valley today. Currently, the valley comprises approximately ten settlements, each housing between three and eight families. (x)

[everythingcentralasia]

The Yaghnobi people, who have inhabited the high mountain valley of Yaghnob in west-central Tajikistan for centuries, have been identified as descendants of the ancient Sogdians. The kingdom of Sogdiana existed from before the sixth century BCE until the Arab conquests of the eighth century CE. The Sogdian territory occupied what is now northern Tajikistan and southern Uzbekistan. From the fifth to the eighth centuries, the Sogdians were the main caravan merchants of  the Silk Road. The Sogdians also established extensive colonies in what is now western China. Their influence was so extensive that Sogdian, an east-Iranian language, was the lingua franca of Central Asia during the seventh century. After the Sogdians were defeated by Arab invaders at the battle of Mount Mugh in 722 CE, many of them fled Arab domination to live in the high mountain valleys. The Yaghnobi people are Sunni Muslims, and some elements of pre-Islamic religion (probably, Zoroastrianism) are still preserved.

Until the 20th century Yagnobians lived through their natural economy and some still do, as the area they originally inhabited is still remote from roads and electrical lines. The first contact with Soviet Union in the 1930s during the Great Purge, led to many Yagnobians being exiled. During 1970 and 1971 the Soviet authorities forcibly deported the entire population of the Yaghnob valley to the cotton plantations in the area of Zafarbod on the northwest border between the Tajik and Uzbek SSRs. The deportation was both politically and economically motivated. The fact that the Yaghnobis’ remote location had allowed them to effectively resist Soviet authority, coupled with the pressing economic need for laborers in the cotton fields motivated the government to force the Yaghnobi people from their mountain homes at gunpoint and fly them by helicopter to grow cotton in irrigated desert land. The population of the Yaghnob valley at that time numbered between three and four thousand. Due to the harsh desert climate with temperatures over 105 degrees Fahrenheit, inadequate housing,  lack of sanitary drinking water, and exposure to tuberculosis, between 400 and 700 Yaghnobis died during their first year in Zafarabod. Since 1983, families have begun to return to the Yaghnob Valley. The returnees live through the natural economy, and the majority remain without roads and electricity. The estimated number of Yagnobi people is approximately 25,000.

x x x x x x

[chingizhobbes]

A little Yaghnobi child, Tajikistan.

[chingizhobbes]

Yaghnobi children in Soghd, Tajikistan. The Yaghnobi people, number about 25,000, are believed to be descended from the ancient Soghdian people who lived in the region of Soghdiana for many centuries.