Dialects of Iradi

The dialects of Iradi (Iradi: Irad tilinin sheveleri) are the regional and social varieties of the Iradi language. Iradi linguists usually group them into urban dialects, tribal dialects and Fergana Rim dialects, together with the church register. The standard language is based on the speech of the middle Talas valley. Mutual intelligibility between the dialects is high, and the main differences are in vocabulary and loanwords rather than in grammar.^[1][2]

Dialect differences in Irad follow social and political lines as much as geographic ones. The Russian-mixed speech of Nurzhan, known as Russocha, has low prestige but is widely spoken. Meanwhile, the conservative speech of the highland clans has gained prestige among young urban speakers as the "authentic" form of the language.^[3]

Classification

The standard classification comes from the dialect expeditions of the Iradi SSR Academy of Sciences, which ran from 1952 to 1983. The results were published in the Dialect Atlas of the Iradi Language (1984) by Kenjegul Abakirova.^[2]

Talas (standard)

The speech of the middle Talas valley was the basis of the written language codified in the 1920s, and it was used again for the Latin-script reforms of the 1990s. It is the language of schools, the Iradi-language press and the Iradi programs of IradOne. Its features define the standard: initial j as /dʒ/, full rounding harmony and the Uzbek-root urban vocabulary of the Kokand period.^[1]

Nurzhan urban speech (Russocha)

In Nurzhan, the Soviet-era capital, many speakers switch between Iradi and Russian within a sentence. Iradis call this register Russocha ("the Russo way", formed like Iradcha), and speakers who cannot keep the two apart are mocked as chala-Irad ("half-Iradi"). It is most common among the generation known as the Russos and their children. Its typical features are:^[4]

• Russian discourse words, such as koroche ("basically"), nu and voobshche;
• Russian numerals for prices, times and dates;
• Russian verbs combined with the Iradi auxiliary et- ("do"), as in zvonit et- ("to phone");
• Russian words for technology, administration and oil-field work.

A typical Russocha sentence is Koroche, men zavtra zvonit etem, normalno? ("Basically, I'll call tomorrow, OK?"). In standard Iradi this is Kyskasy, men erteñ chalam, makulbu? Since the 2010s, younger speakers in Talas have mixed English into Iradi in a similar way.^[4][5]

Tribal dialects

The dialects of the Autonomous Tribal Regions are spoken by the population that never gave up Iradi. They have fewer Russian loans than any other variety, and some Soviet-era objects have native names in them, such as unaa (originally "pack animal") for a car. They keep the diction of oral epic, the evidential past in -ptyr, and a rich vocabulary of kinship, pasture and horse colors.^[2] There are two subgroups:

• Highland dialects of the Talas Alatau and the Chatkal mountains, the most conservative group.
• Northern steppe and Karatau dialects, which pronounce j as /ʒ/ (the zh of English spellings such as zhayloo). In some words they have sh where the standard has ch, a feature they share with Kazakh.^[6]

Chatkal valley

The upper Chatkal valley has the most distinctive highland speech. Church words of Syriac origin are part of everyday speech there, although elsewhere they survive only in the church register. For example, kashysh means a priest and idta the yurt chapel. The holy leaven is called ene achytky (see Kümöch Sacramental Bread). Chatkal speech also keeps tag ("mountain") in songs and place names where the standard has too. Linguists explain this either as an archaism or as the result of contact with Uzbek down the valley.^[2]

Fergana Rim

In the foothills of the Fergana Rim, Iradis live in mixed villages with Kyrgyz and Uzbeks. Many of them are bilingual in Uzbek. Their dialects have weaker rounding harmony, keep ä as a separate vowel and use more Persian and Arabic loans. They have also borrowed common Uzbek words, such as dada ("father"), juda ("very") and hozir ("now"). Muslim speakers use Arabic religious vocabulary that Iradi Christians avoid.^[1]

Keñsuu (extinct)

The Keñsuu dialect of the Keñ-Suu valley in the Talas Alatau had Oghuz features not found in other Iradi speech, such as göz for köz ("eye"). Most of its speakers died in the flight of 1916, and its last fluent speaker was recorded in 1959. It survives mainly in the song Sary Kün, Ejen Kyz, recorded in 1928.^[2]

Sample vocabulary

Standardization

The first standard was set after the creation of the Iradi SSR in 1925 and was written in the Latin alphabet of the 1928 Latinization Decree. The 1941 Cyrillic Mandate brought in Russian spellings for loans, which strengthened the Russian layer in urban speech. The 1995 Latin Orthography Revision made two choices that concern the dialects. First, it uses one letter, j, for both /dʒ/ and the steppe /ʒ/, so each region can read it in its own way. Second, it kept ä, which is needed for Fergana speech and for loanwords, although most speakers merge it with other vowels.^[7] The Language and Education Reform Act of 1997 made the Talas norm compulsory in schools.

Prestige

The Talas standard has official prestige. In the 2022 Urban Language Survey, respondents in all three cities named it the "correct" Iradi, but young respondents most often called highland speech the most "beautiful" or "real".^[3] Young urban speakers borrow pastoral and epic words from it (see Iradi language revival). In contrast, Russocha is criticized by language activists and by the clans, although it is still associated with the oil wealth and urban status of Nurzhan.^[5]

Contact varieties

• Semiz. In the Mexican district of Talas, local Iradi has taken Spanish words such as jefe (foreman) from the beef plants, and tortilla. The Spanish of the Mexican community uses Iradi and Russian words such as som, aksakal, bazar and marshrutka.^[8]
• Koryo-saram. Older members of the community speak Koryo-mar, and Korean food words such as kuksi have entered Iradi and the Russian of Nurzhan. Young people in both cities use K-pop slang (see Koryo-saram in Irad).^[9]

See also

• Iradi Language
• Iradi alphabet
• De-Russification Movement in Irad
• Iradi calendar

References

1. ^ Talas State University Press (2023). Descriptive Grammar of the Iradi Language. Talas, pp. 149–188.
2. ^ Abakirova, Kenjegul (1984). Dialect Atlas of the Iradi Language. Talas: Academy of Sciences of the Iradi SSR.
3. ^ Talas State University, Institute of Sociology (2022). Urban Language Survey: Talas, Nurzhan and Iyık Janyl. Talas State University Press.
4. ^ Journal of Central Asian Linguistics (2019). 'Russocha: Iradi–Russian Code-Switching in Nurzhan.' Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 61–87.
5. ^ Central Asian Cultural Studies Review (2022). 'The Iradi Linguistic Spring: Youth Culture in the ISEZ.' Vol. 14, pp. 45–64.
6. ^ Journal of Central Asian Linguistics (2022). 'Phonological Shift in Northern Kipchak Dialects.' Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 45–67.
7. ^ Journal of Central Asian Linguistics (2022). 'Orthographic Reform and Toponymic Restoration in Irad.' Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 88–104.
8. ^ Talas Herald (2018). 'In Semiz, Spanish with an Iradi Accent.' Talas.
9. ^ Central Asian Demographic Review (2022). 'The Koryo-saram of Northern Transoxiana.' Vol. 15, pp. 78–95.