Indian Loanwords in Evazi Dialect

Hajiani, Farrokh; Shafaei, Sharare; Mahmoudi, Mohsen

doi:10.30473/il.2026.76715.1730

Indian Loanwords in Evazi Dialect

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

10.30473/il.2026.76715.1730

Abstract

Lexical borrowing is an inevitable phenomenon arising from cultural interaction and is attested in all languages worldwide. The Evazi dialect, one of the dialects of the Laristan region, has, due to the long-standing historical and commercial relations between the inhabitants of this area and the Indian subcontinent over past centuries, incorporated a considerable number of loanwords from Indian languages. In this article, on the basis of glossaries of the Evazi dialect and Indian languages, a corpus of loanwords is compiled and, following phonetic transcription, examined comparatively. Subsequently, the general characteristics of the borrowing process, as well as the phonological and semantic changes undergone by the borrowed items, are analyzed. The findings indicate that borrowing has been predominantly lexical in nature, that the loanwords are largely associated with the sphere of everyday livelihood, and that in most cases they have not undergone extensive semantic change. Some items, however, exhibit phonological modifications, as speakers have generally adapted the borrowed forms to the phonological system of the Evazi dialect.

Keywords