Kilit is an extinct dialect of Tati language that is closely related to Harzandi. It is an Iranian dialect of Azerbaijan that is closely related to Talysh. It is probably a dialect of Iranian Tati, otherwise found only in Iran, specifically a subdialect of Harzandi. It was spoken in the villages around Kilit, located 12 kilometers southwest from the city of Ordubad in a district with the same name of Nakhchivan in Azerbaijan. It was still used by non-native speakers as a second language in the 1950s.

The dialect was reported to be spoken in some settlements in Nakhchivan, South Azerbaijan. In addition to Kilit, the region where it was mainly spoken, the dialect was also spoken in Baba Yaqub and other nearby settlements. Kilit, which was spoken north of the Aras River, was the northernmost and northwesternmost of the known Tati dialects.

Classification

Kiliti is a Tati dialect belonging to the Northwestern Iranian languages branch and is closely related to Harzandi. Although scarce data exist on Kiliti, its closest surviving relative Harzandi, is considered a transitional dialect between Talysh and Zaza.

History

The language has been long known to the Russian historians and travelers since the middle of nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Russian historian Ivan Chopin, first mentioned the Kilit dialect and Kilit people back in 1852. He stated that the language of the Kilit people did not resemble any of the local dialects and the Kilit people could be remnants of one of the indigenous tribes of ancient Armenia living there or they could be Talysh, Tat, Tajik or Hebrew origin. He also stated the inhabitants of the village as amounting to 104. Zelinsky researched the language in 1880. He compiled records about Kilit and stated that in the Ordubad region, in the village of Kilit, people spoke a completely different dialect and their language might be a mixture of Kurdish, Persian, and Arabic words. After them, several other individual researchers who heard about the existence of an unintelligible dialect also came to the region to research the dialect and described Kilit as a dialect unintelligible to anyone. In the 1950s a few speakers was reported who used the language probably only as a trade lingo or secret language. In 1966, A. G. Gasanov collected a few words and phrases. Although the possibility of a migration cannot be ruled out, however it is more likely, given more data about Tatic languages and proto-Tatic, that this group extended at least as far as the areas in which the remanent languages are spoken today.

Some available materials

The following is a Kiliti text reported by Zelinsky: Transliterated from Cyrillic :Comparative list of numbers and some words mentioned by Zelinsky and Gasanov:

The identity

Chopin remarks that the inhabitants of Kilit village were professing Shiite faith and their language is not similar to any of the other local dialects. However he has been puzzled about their origin. He mentioned that they might be from Armenian origin or more likely Talyshi, Tat, Tajik or Zoroastrian. Zelinsky considered it as a mixture of Kurdish, Persian and Arabic. Gasanov called it with a certain affinity towards Iranian languages. But only Zelinsky's materials are enough to understand that kiliti is not an argot, possesses an independent grammatical structure and have the main base of the root words and all the typical features of the Iranian languages. The existing materials also provide a sufficient basis to determine it as belonging to the northwestern Iranian group of languages. That language had no written tradition. According to Zelinsky, dozens of villages had spoken the language before, but it was just understandable to the villagers afterwards and then the Azerbaijani language replaced it.

References and notes

Further reading

• Talysh.com Talyshi International Forum