Persian dialects in Khuzestan

There are a number of Khuzestani Persian dialects unique to the province of Khuzestan in southwestern Iran.

There are two main regional classifications, in addition to less common varieties:

Northern region

• Behbahani
• Dezfuli
• Masjed Soleiman
• Shushtari

These are generally unintelligible to speakers of Modern Standard Persian and are related to Lori.

Southern region

• Abadani
• Ahvazi [note orphaned article at Ajami dialect may be this]
• Khorramshahri

These are a regional variety of dialects which are much closer to Standard Persian and in general 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.

1. Word-final [æ] in Classical Persian is allophonized to [e], except [næ] ('no').
2. The long vowels of Classical Persian [eː] and [iː] merged into Modern Persian [iː], and [oː] and [uː] merged into [uː].
3. Arabic letter و is realized as a voiced labiodental fricative [v].
4. 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.
5. 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

1. A. Pisowicz, Origins of the New and Middle Persian phonological systems (Cracow 1985), p. 112-114, 117.

See also

• Iranian languages