Zaza language

[9] According to Ethnologue, Zaza is spoken by around 1.48 million people, and the language is considered threatened due to a declining number of speakers, with many shifting to Turkish.

[14] Linguistically, the classification of Zazaki as either a Kurdish dialect or a distinct language is a topic of debate among scholars.

[16] The differences between them arise from the Kurdish adoption of Persian linguistic features due to historical contact.

[18] Furthermore, arguments regarding the classification of both Zazaki and Gorani highlight that the distinction between a dialect and a language is a social construct influenced by factors such as shared identity, history, beliefs, and living conditions, rather than being based solely on linguistic evidence.

[22] Many Zaza speakers resided in conflict-affected regions of eastern Turkey and have been significantly impacted by both the current and historical political situations.

Only a few elderly monolingual Zaza speakers remain, while the younger generation predominantly speaks other languages.

Turkish laws enacted from the mid-1920s until 1991 banned Kurdish language, including Zazaki, from being spoken in public, written down, or published.

Many Kurdish writers in Turkey are fighting to save Zazaki with children’s books[25] and others with newspapers,[26] but the language faces an uncertain future.

According to a study led by Dr. Nadire Güntaş Aldatmaz, an academic at Ankara University, 402 people aged between 15 and 75 from Mamekîye in Dersim province, were interviewed.

Respondents younger than 18 mostly stated their ethnicity as ‘Turk,’ their mother language as ‘Turkish,’ and their religion as ‘Islam,’ despite having some proficiency in Zazaki.

As the Kurdish language was banned in Turkey during a large part of the Republican period, no text was published in Zaza until 1963.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, most Zaza literature was published in Germany, France and especially Sweden until the ban on the Kurdish language was lifted in Turkey in 1991.

In 1996, however, a group of Zaza-speaking authors gathered in Stockholm and established a common alphabet and orthographic rules which they published.

In addition, there are transitions and edge accents that have a special position and cannot be fully included in any dialect group.

[38] As with a number of other Iranian languages like Talysh,[39] Tati,[40][41] central Iranian languages and dialects like Semnani, Kahangi, Vafsi,[42] Balochi[43] and Kurmanji, Zaza features split ergativity in its morphology, demonstrating ergative marking in past and perfective contexts, and nominative-accusative alignment otherwise.

[58] After the Republic, Zazaki works began to be written in Latin letters, abandoning the Arabic alphabet.

The Zaza alphabet, prepared by Zülfü Selcan and started to be used at Munzur University as of 2012, is another writing system developed for Zazaki, consisting of 32 letters, 8 of which are vowels and 24 of which are consonants.

It includes the Eastern Anatolia region during the reign of Selim III, the life of Ali (caliph), Alevi doctrine and history, the translation of some parts of Nahj al-balagha into Zaza language, apocalyptic subjects and poetic texts.

[72] Apart from Zaza writers, non-Zaza/Ottoman writers/researchers such as Peter Ivanovich Lerch (1827-1884),[73][74] Robert Gordon Latham (1812-1888) Dr. Humphry Sandwith (1822-1881),[75][76] Wilhelm Strecker (1830-1890), Otto Blau (1828-1879),[77] Friedrich Müller (1864) and Oskar Mann (1867-1917)[78] included Zaza content (story, fairy tales dictionary) in their works in the pre-Republican period.

During this period, the development of Zaza literature stagnated in Turkey due to long-term language and cultural bans.

[79] Mevlids and sirahs of Abdulkadir Arslan (1992-1995),[80] Kamil Pueği (1999), Muhammed Muradan (1999-2000) and Cuma Özusan (2009) are other literary works with religious content.

Ware, ZazaPress, Pir, Raştiye, Vengê Zazaistani, Zazaki, Zerq, Desmala Sure, Waxt, Çıme are other magazines that are Zazaki-based and multilingual.