Zaza language

Zaza
Native toAnatolia
RegionMain in Tunceli, Bingöl, Erzincan, Sivas, Elazığ, Erzurum, Malatya Gümüşhane Province, Şanlıurfa Province, and Varto, Adıyaman Province; diasporic in Mutki, Sarız, Aksaray, and Taraz
EthnicityZaza
Native speakers
(1.6 million cited 1998)
Latin script
Language codes
ISO 639-2zza
ISO 639-3zza – inclusive code
Individual codes:
kiu – Kirmanjki (Northern Zaza)
diq – Dimli (Southern Zaza)
Glottologzaza1246
ELPDimli
Linguasphere58-AAA-ba

Zaza or Zazaki (Zazaki: zazakî or Zazaki), also known by other names, is an Iranian language mainly spoken in eastern Turkey, and is the native language of Zazas. It belongs to the northwest-Iranian group of Iranic languages. The number of people who speak Zaza is not known exactly.

Name

While the language is known as Zaza or Zazaki in many Western sources, the language or dialects has been known by a variety of other names by the people speaking it.

Dimili

One popular name is Dimili or Dimli (Zazaki: dimilî, Dımılî), also known by some speakers as dimbilî. The term is believed to either come from a region in Northern Iran known as Daylam, or the Kurdish Donboli tribe, also known as Dümbeli, which has existed in regions where Zaza is spoken. Some scholars have researched that the word Dimili might from a region in Northern Iran known as Daylam due to the similarity to languages in Daylam like Talysh or Semnani. Other scholars disagree with this and say that evidence is weak when you look at other things than language. Zazas were also known as Tmbli in some Armenian sources, and the sound changes that could turn a word like Dunbuli into Dimili is also documented.

Kirmanjki

Another popular name is Kirmanjki (Zazaki: kirmanckî or Kırmancki), which should not be confused with Kurmanji. They do have the same etymology. The word kirmanckî/Kırmancki comes from kirmanc/Kırmanc, which generally means a Kurd or an Alevi Kurd. Some researchers believe it only has the meaning of an Alevi,, but other researchers believe that the term can have multiple meanings at the same time.

Kirdki

Another name for the language is Kirdki (Zazaki: kirdkî or Kırdki), which means Kurdish.

Classification

Zaza is classified as a Northwestern Iranian language, and is according to Glottolog a part of the Adharic languages and is closely related to the languages here. It has traditionally been considered a Kurdish dialect, but especially due to early phonological (sound-related) differences, a better description would be a language rather than a dialect. However, Zaza is phonologically very similar to Kurmanji, and has been highly influenced by it through history.

It has sometimes been considered to be a part of the Zaza-Gorani language group. A researcher, Shuan Karim, also reconstructed Proto-Zaza-Gorani grammar in a peer-reviewed presentation at ICIL 09.

According to Jost Gippert, it might be especially close with Gorani and Semnani because of similar grammar.

Other websites

References

  1. ↑ Zaza at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Kirmanjki (Northern Zaza) at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Dimli (Southern Zaza) at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Asatrian, Garnik S.. "DIMLĪ." Encyclopaedia Iranica. Published December 15, 1995. https://doi.org/10.1163/2330-4804_EIRO_COM_8398
  3. ↑ Christensen, Arthur. Les Dialectes d’Awromān et de Pāwä: Textes recueillis par Åge Meyer Benedictsen. Revus et publiés avec des notes et une esquisse de grammaire par Arthur Christensen. Copenhagen: Andr. Fred. Høst & Søn
  4. ↑ Mann, Oskar & Karl Hadank. . Mundarten der Zâzâ, hauptsächlich aus Siwerek und Kor (Kurdisch-Persische Forschungen, Abteilung III, Band IV). Berlin: De Gruyter
  5. ↑ Dogan, Mahîr. "8 Problems in Zazakî nomenclature". Gorani in its Historical and Linguistic Context, edited by Shuan Osman Karim and Saloumeh Gholami, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2024, pp. 249-276. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111168852-008
  6. ↑ Zohrab, Krikor [Léart, Marcel], 1913. La question armenienne a la lumiere des documents. Paris: Augustin Challamel.
  7. ↑ Malmîsanij, Mehemed. “The Kırmanjki (Zazaki) Dialect of Kurdish Language and the Issues It Faces.” (2021). p. 668
  8. ↑ Zîlan, Bîlal. “Zazaların Kendini Adlandırma Biçimlerine Dair Tarihsel Bir Çözümleme.” Sözden Yazıya Zazaca, vol. Peywend , 2019. p. 316-326.
  9. ↑ Firat, Gülsün. 1997. Sozioökonomischer Wandel und ethnische Identität in der kurdisch-alevitischen Region Dersim. (Bielefelder Studien Zur Entwicklungssoziologie). Saarbrücken: Verlag für Entwicklungspolitik. p. 143.
  10. ↑ Dogan, Mahîr. "8 Problems in Zazakî nomenclature". Gorani in its Historical and Linguistic Context, edited by Shuan Osman Karim and Saloumeh Gholami, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2024, pp. 249-276. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111168852-008
  11. ↑ Keskin, Mesut. 2010. Zazaki. https://web.archive.org/web/20200605115426/http://www.zazaki.de/deutsch/aufsaezte/Keskin-Zazaki.pdf.
  12. ↑ Dogan, Mahîr. "8 Problems in Zazakî nomenclature". Gorani in its Historical and Linguistic Context, edited by Shuan Osman Karim and Saloumeh Gholami, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2024, pp. 249-276.
  13. ↑ Çağlayan, Ercan. 2016. Zazalar: tarih, kültür ve kimlik [Zazas: history, culture, and identity]. Istanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi.
  14. ↑ Hammarström, Harald, Robert Forkel, Martin Haspelmath & Sebastian Bank. 2026. Zaza. In: Glottolog 5.3. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. Available online at: https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/zaza1246
  15. ↑ Lerch, Peter. 1857. Forschungen über die Kurden und die Iranischen Nordchaldäer. St. Petersburg: Eggers et Comp.
  16. ↑ Paul, Ludwig. 1998. The Position of Zazaki among West Iranian Languages. In Nicholas Sims-Williams (ed.), Proceedings of the Third European Conference of Iranian Studies held in Cambridge, 11th to 15th September 1995. Part I: Old and Middle Iranian Studies, 163-177. Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert.
  17. ↑ Karacan, H. (2020). Kurmanji and Zazaki Dialects: Comparative Study on their Phonetics. International Journal of Kurdish Studies, 6(1), 35-51. https://doi.org/10.21600/ijoks.653812
  18. ↑ Paul, L. (2009). Zazaki. in G. Windfuhr, The Iranian languages (s. 545–586). Routledge.
  19. ↑ "Zaza-Gorani". Ethnologue. 2025. Retrieved 12 February 2025.
  20. ↑ Karim, Shuan Osman. "Proto-Zaza-Gorani: A historical-comparative reconstruction." Ninth International Conference on Iranian Linguistics (ICIL 9), 19-21 Aug. 2021, Paris, France.
  21. ↑ Gippert, Jost. (2009). Zur dialektalen Stellung des Zazaki [On the dialectal position of Zazaki]. Die Sprache, 47(1) [2007/2008], 77–107.