The local dialect spoken in Meymeh County, Isfahan Province, is one of the rare dialects of the Pahlavi language (Middle Persian), whose signs can be seen nowhere else in this county except in the words uttered by middle-aged and elderly men and women of the region, and therefore it is viewed as an endangered part of our intangible cultural heritage.
The research on this dialect started by interviewing some completely illiterate elderly people in Meymeh County. The reason was that these people historically had no familiarity with modern languages and dialects, and consequently it was possible to hear the original Meyma’i dialect from them.
The interviews conducted in this regard were gathered by the researcher and were then precisely transcribed phonetically and in words. Afterwards, the grammar rules and a list of words were extracted from them.
Finally, 70 to 80% of the original words were presented at the end of the research.
The Persian language contains six pronouns; however, the Meyma’i dialect has an additional pronoun, which is solely used together with the word “bayad” (meaning should/must), a common feature between this dialect and the French language.
The Meyma’i dialect has several other interesting features as well. In comparison with the Persian language, it has more sounds and includes highly complex verbal structures, which have more tenses than Persian does.
Past tense verbs in this dialect are not formed according to the patterns of other languages but follow a different pattern. In addition, transitive and intransitive verbs in this dialect are different from each other.
The dialect is very rich in terms of grammar, phonology and terminology and is extraordinarily generative as well. Thanks to these qualities, it was possible to extract the principle behind compound nouns and compound adjectives.
Furthermore, there are no feminine adjectives in this dialect. In fact, the same adjectives are used for both masculine and feminine nouns.
As said before, the Meyma’i dialect is phonologically very rich. Containing 25 consonants, 9 vowels and 5 diphthongs and a total of 39 sounds confirms the phonetic richness of it.
There is also no consonant /zh/ in this dialect. Words including this sound have been transferred to this dialect from other languages, especially Persian.
