| Chapter : | Brief Introduction to the Herati Dialect |
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Brief Introduction to the Herati Dialect
The purpose of this short summary of certain important aspects of the Herati dialect is simply to help the reader to better understand the original texts. Thus, it is by no means a comprehensive description of the dialect, which one would find in my book The Herati Dialect of the Dari Language of Modern Afghanistan.
Transcription System and Diacritical Signs
The transcription employed in this book is Latin-based with the addition of certain diacritical marks. Symbols “ê”, “ô”, and “â” are used for the historically long vowels, “ê” for rendering a closed, upper-mid “e” (“ệ” indicating its more closed allophone) similar to “i” in “give” in American pronunciation (versus “i”, which renders a sound similar to “ee” in “deep”); “ô” (closed “o”) does not occur in English; while “â” stands for a vowel similar to “a” in “call”; “ε” renders an open “e”, symbols “ẹ” and “ι” imply more closed variants of the historically short