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where possible and also to a certain extent diversify the words introducing direct speech (which is always introduced by the verb “to say” in the original): “said,” “told,” “asked,” “replied.”
The publication of these materials—given the cultural, historic, geographic, and ethnographic importance of the region (the border area between Afghanistan and Iran), scarcity of information about it, unavailability for modern scholarly research resulting from the unfavorable political and military situation, and the gradual disappearance of local dialects in Afghanistan, like everywhere in the world—will fill up a big vacuum in Iranian and Afghan studies. The book will be of interest primarily to linguists and language learners, and those studying Afghan Persian. It will also be useful as a language learning aid for intermediate and advanced students of spoken Afghan Persian in general and of Persian (in the broader sense) dialectology in particular, as well as foreign NGO workers or interpreters/translators who find themselves in the field in western Afghanistan or far eastern Iran. Though the present book is by no means a study in folklore literature or anthropology, these texts containing ethnographic data may be useful to folklorists or ethnographers.
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. F. Lewis, Dr. J. Perry, K. Popp, and N. Ackerman for their help when this book was being prepared for publication.
Studies in the Dialects and Folklore of Herat and Adjacent Regions
From a linguistic perspective, the region of Herat (Herat province of modern Afghanistan) is closely connected with Khorasan province of modern Iran, while its dialect shares all the basic features of the Khorasani group within the continuum of Persian-Dari-Tajiki dialects (see the previous comments). On the other hand, Herat has been part of Afghanistan since the inception of that country and therefore has for centuries been linked together with the rest of the Persian dialects of Afghanistan and subjected to their strong influence, primarily to the influence of the dialect of Kabul—the capital of Afghanistan. Considering these factors,