Aimaq dialect

Aimaq or Aimaqi (Persian: ایماقی, romanized: Aimāqi) is the dominant eastern Persian ethnolect spoken by the Aimaq people in central northwest Afghanistan (west of the Hazarajat) and eastern Iran. It is close to the Dari varieties of Persian.^[2] The Aimaq people are thought to have a 5–15% literacy rate.^[1]

Aimaq
گویش ایماقی
Aimaqi written in the Perso-Arabic script in Nastaliq style.
Native to	Afghanistan, Iran
Ethnicity	Aimaq
Native speakers	1.9 million (2017–2019)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Iranian Southwestern Iranian Persian Aimaq
Writing system	Persian alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	aiq
Glottolog	aima1241

Dialects

Subdialects of Aimaq dialect include:

• Changezi
• Firozkohi
• Jamshidi
• Maliki
• Mizmast
• Taimani
• Timuri
• Zainal
• Zohri (also known as Zuri)

Phonology

Phonetically, as one of the eastern Persian dialects, the Aimaq dialect resembles a formal or classical form of Persian.

Vowels:

• The "majhul" vowels ē / ī and ō / ū are still kept separate, whereas in western Persian they are merged as ī and ū respectively. For instance, the identically written words شیر 'lion' and 'milk' are in western Persian both pronounced [šīr], but in Aimaq [šēr] for 'lion' and [šīr] for 'milk'. The long vowel in زود 'quick' and زور 'strong' is realized as [ū] in western Persian, in contrast, these words are pronounced as [zūd] and [zōr] respectively by Aimaq speakers.
• The diphthongs of early Classical Persian aw (as ow in Engl. cow) and ay (as i in English ice) have in Aimaq become [ow] (as in Engl. low) and [ej] (as in Engl. day). Dari, on the other hand, is more archaic, e.g. نوروز 'Persian New Year' is realized as [nowrūz] in Iranian, and [nawrōz] in Aimaq, and نخیر 'no' is uttered as [naχejr] in Iranian, and as [naχajr] in Aimaq.
• The high short vowels [i] and [u] tend to be lowered in western Persian to [e] and [o].
• /æ/^{[clarification needed]} and /e/ are in Aimaq kept separate in word-final positions, unlike western Persian, where /æ/ has [e] as a word-final allophone.

Consonants:

• Aimaq still retains the (classical) bilabial pronunciation [w] of the labial consonant و, which is realized as a voiced labiodental fricative [v] in western Persian. [v] is found in Aimaq as an allophone of f before voiced consonants.
• The voiced uvular stop /ɢ/ (ق) and voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ (غ) are still kept separate in Aimaq. They have coincided in western Persian (probably under the influence of Turkic languages like Azeri and Turkmen).^[3]

See also

• Hazaragi dialect