A study of the Turkish dialect of Kelat-i Nader inKhorasan

Many Turkish languages are spoken in Iran, which differ from each other in linguistic differences. Azerbaijan Turkish, Kashkay Turkish, Halac Turkish and partly Khorasan Turkish can be listed among the best known of them. Khorasan Turks, who are the focus of this study, have been living in the North Khorasan and Rezevi Khorasan states of the Khorasan geography, which consists of three separate states in today's Iran, for centuries, in a scattered manner and generally with the Persian and Kurdish peoples. So far, no Turkish variant spoken in South Khorasan has been encountered. In this study, the dialects spoken by Khorasan Turks living in the city of Kelat, in the north of Rezevi Khorasan, are discussed at the levels of phonology, morphology and syntax. In the city of Kelat, Turks live together with Kurds, Lors and Persians who are speakers of the Iranian language. Since Persian is the only official and therefore dominant and prestigious language of Iran, it has effects on Turkish dialects in the region at all linguistic levels, as well as other languages. As a result of our field study conducted in 2022 and our research and investigations based on this study, it was determined that the Kelat dialect of Khorasan Turkish has two sub-dialect groups. Different factors played a role in the formation of these two sub-dialect groups. The factors in question are: the indigenous people of Khorasan, the Turks who allegedly migrated to the region later and possibly from Azerbaijan, and the dialects spoken by non-Turkish ethnic groups living in a few other villages. There are significant differences between a native and immigrant variants at the lexical, phonological, and morphological levels. The first of these is the preservation of the initial /b/ sound or its development to /v/; The second is the use of -Ib, -IbdIr or -mIş suffixes in the learned past tense function. The immigrant dialect is claimed to have migrated from Azerbaijan to the ix region, although there are no concrete notes or documents in the sources. In the Khorasan Turkish variant, the initial /b/ consonant developed into /v/, and the immigrant variants preserved the /b/ consonant. The suffix -Ib is used as the past tense suffix learned in the native variants of Khorasan Turkish, and both -mIş and -Ib suffixes are used in the immigrant variants. Some words are used in different ways in two dialects. For example, the word brother is äké in the local dialect and qardash in immigrant dialect. The text parts used in the study were created based on the compiled audio recordings. Keywords: Khorasan Turkish, Kelat Dialect, Kelat-i Nader, Iranian Turkish Dialects.