MONGABAY.COM
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more)
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
|
|
Iran
Index
The second major element of the population is composed of
various Turkic-speaking groups. The Turkic languages belong to the
Ural-Altaic family, which includes many languages of Soviet Central
Asia and western China, as well as Turkish, Hungarian, and Finnish.
The various Turkic languages spoken in Iran tend to be mutually
intelligible. Of these, only Azarbaijani is written to any extent.
In Iran it is written in the Arabic script, in contrast to the
Azarbaijani in Turkey, which is written in the Roman script, and
that of the Soviet Union, which is written in the Cyrillic script.
Unlike Indo-European languages, Turkic languages are characterized
by short base words to which are added numerous prefixes and
suffixes, each addition changing the meaning of the base. They are
also distinguished by their vowel harmony, which means that the
kind of vowel used in the base word and the additives must agree.
Thus, lengthy words might be filled with "o's" and "u's" or with
"a's" and "e's," but not with mixtures of the two.
Turkic speakers make up as much as 25 percent of Iran's total
population. They are concentrated in northwestern Iran, where they
form the overwhelming majority of the population of East Azarbaijan
and a majority of West Azarbaijan. They also constitute a
significant minority in the provinces of Fars, Gilan, Hamadan,
Khorasan, Mazandaran, and Tehran. Except for the Azarbaijanis, most
of the Turkic groups are tribally organized. Some of the Turkic
tribes continue to follow a nomadic or seminomadic life. Educated
Turkic speakers in the large cities speak and understand Persian.
Data as of December 1987
|
|