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Language Lineage

Arghu (Khalaj)

Khalaj, a single language set apart less by innovations than by what it kept: Proto-Turkic initial `*h` and medial `*d`, lost or changed everywhere else in Common Turkic (Khalaj *hadaq* 'foot', Turkish *ayak*).

c. 1st millennium CE – presentVillages of Markazi Province in central Iran, between Qom, Ashtian and Tafresh
On this page
  1. The Khalaj of Central Iran
  2. An Archaic Turkic
  3. Where it's spoken
  4. Turning points
  5. Contested classifications

01

The Khalaj of Central Iran

Khalaj is spoken by a small community in villages between Qom and Arak in central Iran, surrounded by Persian and, to the north and west, by Azerbaijani. The Khalaj are named in medieval Islamic sources, which place Turkic Khalaj groups in what is now Afghanistan, and in the 1070s Mahmud al-Kashgari named both the Khalaj and the Arghu in his dictionary of Turkic dialects. How and when the present community came to central Iran is not known.

The Russian-born orientalist Vladimir Minorsky, working in Britain, published notes on the language in 1940 and saw that it was unusual. Until the late 1960s, however, Khalaj was generally taken to be a variety of Azerbaijani. The German Turkologist Gerhard Doerfer began fieldwork among the Khalaj in 1968 and showed that it was a distinct and very conservative Turkic language. He argued that it continues the Arghu dialect recorded by al-Kashgari, and Lars Johanson's classification accordingly treats Arghu as one of the six main branches of Turkic.

Doerfer counted about 17,000 speakers in 1968. Later estimates range from about 19,000 to over 40,000. Nearly all speakers also use Persian, and surveys in the 2010s found that few families still passed Khalaj on to their children.

02

An Archaic Turkic

Khalaj matters to comparative Turkic linguistics because it keeps several features that the other languages have lost. The best known is initial h: Khalaj hadaq 'foot' corresponds to Turkish ayak and Old Turkic adaq. Most scholars, following Doerfer, take this h to continue a Proto-Turkic sound, which makes Khalaj the only living language to preserve it, although some have argued that it arose secondarily.

Khalaj also keeps Proto-Turkic *d inside words, where Oghuz languages such as Turkish and Azerbaijani have y and Khakas has z: hadaq against Turkish ayak and Khakas azax. And it keeps distinctions of vowel length that match those preserved in Turkmen and Sakha, with Proto-Turkic long vowels often surfacing as diphthongs.

At the same time Khalaj has been reshaped by long bilingualism. Its vocabulary is full of Persian words, it has borrowed Persian conjunctions and clause types, and its word order and verb forms show Persian and Azerbaijani influence. It is therefore both one of the most archaic and one of the most heavily contact-influenced Turkic languages.

On the map

Where it’s spoken

Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. Iranc. 20,000–40,000

Figures are rough first-language estimates, rounded, from censuses and Ethnologue. Counts for small or scattered communities are especially uncertain.

Rings along the limb

Turning points

Oldest first.

  1. Split1070s CEContested

    Arghu in al-Kashgari

    Mahmud al-Kashgari's dictionary names the Arghu and the Khalaj as Turkic groups with speech of their own. Doerfer identified Khalaj as the descendant of this Arghu, an identification most Turkologists follow but which rests on limited evidence.

    Figures · Gerhard Doerfer (1920–2003)

    Sources (2)
    • Johanson, Lars & Éva Ágnes Csató (eds.). 1998. The Turkic Languages. London: Routledge.
    • Doerfer, Gerhard. 1987. Lexik und Sprachgeographie des Chaladsch. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
  2. Contact2nd millennium CE

    Persian bilingualism

    Living as a small enclave among Persian speakers, the Khalaj become bilingual. Persian vocabulary, conjunctions and clause types enter the language, alongside influence from neighbouring Azerbaijani.

    Sources (2)
    • Doerfer, Gerhard. 1971. Khalaj Materials. Bloomington: Indiana University.
    • Johanson, Lars & Éva Á. Csató, eds. 2022. The Turkic Languages, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
  3. Writing1940 – 1980s

    Recording Khalaj

    Vladimir Minorsky publishes the first notes on the language in 1940. From 1968 Gerhard Doerfer documents it in detail, recognises it as a separate branch of Turkic rather than a dialect of Azerbaijani, and publishes materials, a dictionary and a dialect atlas.

    Figures · Gerhard Doerfer (1920–2003)

    Sources (3)
    • Minorsky, Vladimir. 1940. The Turkish dialect of the Khalaj. Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies 10(2).
    • Doerfer, Gerhard. 1971. Khalaj Materials. Bloomington: Indiana University.
    • Doerfer, Gerhard. 1987. Lexik und Sprachgeographie des Chaladsch. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Outside the tree

Contested classifications

These disagreements may never be settled. Each position is given with its grounds, and no side is declared correct.

  • Largely rejected

    Khalaj as an Oghuz language, a variety close to Azerbaijani

    Evidence for

    Khalaj speakers live near Azerbaijani speakers and their language has absorbed much Azerbaijani vocabulary and grammar, so before Doerfer's fieldwork it was generally treated as a dialect of Azerbaijani.

    Evidence against

    Doerfer showed that Khalaj keeps initial *h, medial *d and old vowel-length contrasts that Oghuz has lost or changed (Khalaj hadaq, Azerbaijani ayaq 'foot'). Such archaisms cannot have been borrowed, so the Oghuz-like features are best explained as contact. Doerfer and later Johanson and Glottolog treat it as a separate branch of Common Turkic.

    Sources (3)