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Is it Noroz or Noroj?
30.1.2010
By Dr Amir Sharifi |
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Dr Amir Sharifi is the President of the Kurdish
American Education Society.
January
30, 2010
Recently there has been a debate on the etymology of
the term Noroz and it has been suggested the term
Noroz be replaced with Noroj [zh]. However, the term
Noroz with distinct Kurdish regional pronunciations
is widely used throughout greater Kurdistan; as a
matter of fact, in some Kurdish dialects, such as
Laki, the very word, “Ruz” rather than “Rozh” is
used. The use of “Noro[zh]” is limited to some areas
in Kermanshah and its surrounding regions. While
such a proposal merits scholarly scrutiny and fear
of language loss is a legitimate concern and hence
language revitalization should be an integral part
of the Kurdish language rights, we should be careful
not to confuse language revitalization with language
purification. While the latter is an attempt by
minority and endangered languages to preserve or
revive a language that is in danger, language
purification is an institutional often governmental
effort that signifies otherness and boundary
building by arguing that a particular language
variety is purer and even better than the other
neighboring varieties. This language ideology is
motivated by the actual or perceived subordination
and decline of one language by the linguistic and
cultural dominance of an official or a more powerful
language variety. The presumed protection from the
decline could occur at lexical, phonological, and
grammatical levels. The main issue here is the
phonological difference between [Noroz] and [Norozh].
The distinction lies in the final fricative phonemes
of [z] and [ʒ].
It has been argued that the phoneme [z] used by most
Kurds is a Persianized form of the original Kurdish
word “Norozh”. The phonology of Norozh phonetically
transcribed respectively as [and [ʒ]
merits a linguistic investigation based on
linguistic evidence and the linguistic diversity of
Kurdish. An in-depth study would call for both
diachronic (historical) and synchronic (current
times) analysis of different Kurdish language
communities. However I will limit myself to a brief
introductory analysis and argue that linguistic
evidence in relation to Sorani dialect reveals that
a productive rule is responsible for the
assimilation of “zh” to “z” rather than language
contact not to mention the fact that language
contact particularly among closely related language
varieties such as Kurdish dialects and Persian is an
obvious historical fact; however, my main hypothesis
is the evolution and distribution of the sounds in
question reflect a larger change in language forms
or structures.
Each language has a set number of consonants and
vowels in its system of its phonology, called
inventory. Kurdish and Persian in the category of
fricatives have both [z} an apical sound and [ʒ or
zh], a post alveolar sound. In the International
Phonetic Alphabet these sounds are represented
accordingly as follows: [z] and [ʒ] . I will be
using the familiar symbols from now on for the
readers’ convenience although this ease of
accessibility will create phonetic imprecision and
inaccuracies.
As a general rule if a language has [zh], it has [z]
as well. But if a language has [z], it does not
necessarily have [zh], the former is the case of
Kurdish and Persian, the latter Arabic. Arabic has
[z] but no [zh]. The two distinct sounds create
contrastive pairs in Kurdish and Persian as in [zhian]
“life” vs. [zian] “damage or loss” in Kurdish and [zhendah]
“torn” vs. [zenda] “alive” in Persian. We could
generally claim that the structural descriptions for
the two sounds in Kurdish and Persian are similar,
what may vary is the structural change , which in
essence is the kind of change that a sound goes
through depending on the environment in which it
appears. For instance, the sound [zh] in English can
appear in the middle of a word such as in
“pleasure”, but never in the beginning of a word.
Neither Kurdish nor Persian has these environmental
constraints when it comes to the two fricative
phonemes in initial,www.ekurd.netmedial
and final positions. What is obvious is that both
Kurdish and Persian use both phonemes in different
environments. However, it appears that Kurdish uses
[zh] more productively in different environments,
particularly in initial position than Persian.
However, a diachronic change seems to have been
under way. What is to be investigated are the
structural change and the conditions that have
caused the change, a change that is today observable
to a great extent in many dialects of Kurdish. In
addition to the contrastive function of the two
phonemes in Kurdish as in [hazhar] “poor” and [hazar]
“thousand” , [zhur] “ above” and [zor]
“ strength and force”, [zan] “knowing” and ,[zhan]
“pain”, the assimilation of [zh] to [z] in Sorani
dialect of Kurdish and perhaps other dialects is
also a productive rule as observed in the following
examples: [zhanu—zanu], “knee”, [zhahr—zahr],
“poison”, [zhang—zang] “rust”, [rozhgar-rozegar]
“times”, [rozhnameh-roznameh] “newspaper”, Such a
change is linguistically motivated internally and
happens at an unconscious level. In other words, the
right hand phoneme [zh] assimilates to the left hand
one [z]. Another way of explaining the rule change
when it comes to the assimilation of [zh] to [z] is
through free variation between the two sounds,
particularly in Sorani dialect. Some examples of
free variation are as follows: [zhira/zira]”cumin”,
[zhin—zinigani] “life”. [zhar-zar:] “withered”, [zhang
asen—zang asen],”the iron rust”. This assimilation
rule is no longer productive or is now lost in
Persian. Maybe that is why a cursory survey of
Dehkhoda Dictionary will render very few [zh]
initial word; most Persian words with the initial [zh]
are phonological borrowings or transliteration from
French with a few original Persian stems and roots.
To find the linguistic evidence for this
assimilation in Kurdish can be found in the
derivatives of the term “noroz” as in [norozana] “
New Year present” or “new year’s greetings”, [no
roznameh] “a New Year publication of a paper”, [noroz
mahng] “the first Kurdish month”. The prefix “no-,
naw-, ni-…etc” might have conditioned the
assimilation process altogether. What is interesting
to note is that the segmental features of various
dialects have been retained in the pronunciation of
the tem in various Kurdish varieties as noted by
Izady (1992): “naw rooz” in northern Kurdistan and
“ni roz” in Western Kurdistan ,www.ekurd.netand
“no rooz in the southern Kurdistan. Other words
preceded by the same prefix and followed by the
phoneme “z” co-occur in words such as in [nozad]
“newly born” {noza] “a woman that has just given
birth”. The observation that Kurdish synchronically
uses [zh] more productively is a valid one; however,
this brief analysis shows that internal linguistic
change is responsible for this assimilation rather
than language contact or linguistic hegemony of
Persian. The term that the great majority of the
Kurdish speakers of different dialects are using,
can not be a mere linguistic anomaly or linguistic
subordination of an ancient people who began to
insist on their distinct discourse of identity long
before the idea of nation states had taken form even
in the West.
The author Amir Sharifi PhD is the KAES President
Acknowledgements: I thank Ali Ashoori for his
informative discussion of the topic with me.
Works Cited
Hazhar (1991). Hanbane Farhangi kurdi-farsi (Kurdish
Persian Dictionary). Tehran
:Surush Press.
Izady, M.(1992). The Kurds, Washington, DC Taylor&
Francis, Inc.
Markukh, S, M (1950?) Farhangi Mardox, Kurdi, Farsi,
Arabi ( Mardox Dictionary: Kurdish, Persian,
Arabic), Sanandaj: Gharighi publications.
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