A Study Written in Khorasan Turkic: Çox İreye Ġısme Yār

Khorasan Turkic, which is a member of Oghuz group dialects, is spoken mainly in the provinces of North Khorasan and Razavi Khorasan in northeastern Iran. Khorasan Turks in Iran usually live together with Persian and Kurdish societies in Bojnourd, Shirvan, Quchan, Dargaz, Kalat, Esfarayen, Sebzevar and the north of Nishabur, Cuveyn and Cogatay, Servilayet (Çegene) and surrounding villages and towns. In recent years in Iran, publications on the mother tongue of Khorasan Turks draw attention. Some of these publications are about the vocabulary of Khorasan Turkic, folklore products and grammar. Some of them are literary works written by Khorasan Turks in their mother tongue. In 2017, Muhammed Hisârî’s Çox İreye Ġısme Yār “Don’t be too sad lover” was also included in the series of literary works published by the Khorasan Turks. This work is a book of poetry. The language used by Hisârî in his poems reflects the Bojnourd dialect of Khorasan Turkic. In addition, it contains some of the futures of the other dialects of the Khorasan Turkic and South Azerbaijani dialects. This is especially evident at the level of morphology. In the preface of the work, Hisârî himself felt the need to state this feature of the language he used. The author wanted to be understood in all Khorasan and stated that he made choices from the region. For example, in Khorasan Turkic the protection of /b/ at the beginning of the word is characteristic: bār ‘to have’, bār- ‘to arrive’, ber- ‘to give’. The word bār in the text was used with both /b/ and /v/ as common in Azerbaijani. In the book, poems were written in two different alphabets and a Persian translation of each poem was presented. The poems are written side by side with the Arabic alphabet and a Latin based alphabet that are valid for Persian in the region. Latin based writing is a phonetic alphabet. As a matter of fact, the author himself stated that while aiming at writing this, he aimed to reflect on the sound features. It is known that the Turkic dialects changes at certain levels typologically in Iran in the face of the lingua franca Persian. These contacts can be monitored in various categories ranging from phonetics to syntax. Reflections of Persian interactions in Khorasan Turkic are relatively higher than other variables. Hisârî’s poems also contain examples of such interactions.