Moghol language
Moghol language
Main page
2203123

Moghol language

logo
Community Hub0 subscribers
What are your thoughts?
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Moghol language

Moghol (or Mogholi; Dari: مُغُلی) is a critically endangered and possibly extinct Mongolic language spoken in the province of Herat, Afghanistan, in the villages of Kundur and Karez-i-Mulla. The speakers were the Moghol people, who numbered 2,000 members in the 1970s. They descend from the Mongol army of Genghis Khan who conquered Afghanistan (then part of the Khwarazmian Empire) in the 13th century.

In the 1970s, when the German scholar Michael Weiers did fieldwork on the language, few people spoke it, most knew it passively and most were older than 40. It is unknown if there are still speakers of the language, and it is listed as dormant by Ethnologue.

The language has been strongly influenced by Persian in its phonology, morphology and syntax, causing Weiers to state that it has the appearance of a "true Inner Asian creole language".

Moghol's phonology is influenced by Persian. It has a system of six vowel qualities with no length contrast: /i e a u o ɔ/.

/ɦ/ may range between voiced [ɦ] and voiceless [h].

Historically, the Moghol language was written using the Perso-Arabic script. Extant Moghol literature included Islamic texts, poetry, Mogholi-Persian vocabularies, and Mogholi grammars.

Moghol grammar shows substantial influence from Persian languages, having borrowed even word classes not found in other Mongolic languages: the parts of speech are nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, prepositions, adverbs and conjunctions.

Nouns are marked for number and case. Verbs are marked for person, number, tense-aspect and mood. Adjectives inflect for the comparative and superlative degree with the Persian suffixes -tar and -tariin, but not for number and case.

See all
User Avatar
No comments yet.