BĀDRŪDI, one of the local dialects of the Kāšān region, spoken in Bādrūd, a dehestān (rural district) of Naṭanz. Locally the dialect is called ozun dei “village language.” The material for Bādrūdi was collected in Bād, the center of the dehestān, in August of 1969. Other villages in Bādrūd which speak the dialect are Erīsmān, ʿAbbāsābād, Ḵāledābād, Dehābād, Famī, Matīnābād, and Sar-āsiā, all in the dehestān of Naṭanz.
The village of Bād. Bād is a rather large village, some 74 km southeast of Kāšān (via Hanjan Bridge), situated at the edge of the salt desert (Dašt-e Kavīr) in the garmsīr (hot zone), south of Abūzaydābād. Its population was about 4,500 (about 6,000 with its farms) when the writer visited it in 1969. It had seven quarters and six mosques. Drinking water was obtained from a deep well about 6 km from the village. Irrigation water came from a qanāt and four deep wells. The orchards (bāḡs, said to be around 2,000) and the fields belonged to small owners. The main produce were wheat and barely as winter crops (šatawī) and tobacco, melon, watermelon, cucumber as summer crops (ṣayfī); also fruits were grown, chiefly pomegranates, figs, grapes, and some dates. Of late the village had been exporting grass seed for lawns. It had about 1,000 carpet looms engaged principally in weaving rugs (qālīča). Some 150 belonged to the state-run Iranian carpet company, Šerkat-e Farš-e Īrān. (See also Razmārā, Farhang I, p. 30.)
The dialect. Phonology. The vowels are i, e, a, ü, u, ö, (o), ā; ā becomes somewhat rounded before the nasals and o appears to be an allophone of ā, but my material was too limited to allow a detailed phonological analysis. (In the examples below inconsistencies in the recorded material have not been corrected.) The consonants are the same as in Persian. In phonology Bādrūdi, like other Kāšāni dialects exhibits the general features of northwestern Iranian (cf. abyānaʾī): y- < y-; sp < Proto-Iranian *tsṷ < IE. *kṷ (> Av. sp, OPers. s); b- < dṷ-; z < OIr. z < IE. palatal g (h) (> OPers. d); j- < OIr. j < IE. velar g(h); examples ya “barly,” öšpöš “louse,” bar “door,” ezze “yesterday,” jen “woman” (but zanda “alive,” from NPers.). Noteworthy features of phonological development of Bādrūdi include: l < rt in vā-gel- “to return” and mālá “mother” (also mo); intervocalic č > č in pič- “to cook” (but rij- “to pour”); loss of dentals, r, and h in word-final position (often with compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel, e.g., pe: “father,” ša: “town”); loss of x initially before r (e.g., rin-/ri- “to buy,” rus “rooster”) and before t in past stems (e.g., vot- “said,” batta “is asleep”).
Morphology. The nominal system is based on two numbers, one case, and one grammatical gender, and is therefore simpler than that found in most Kāšāni dialects (Cf. abūzaydābādī and abyānaʾī).
The plural is formed by adding the plural marker -e to the singular, e.g. bāl-e ama na-mer “do not break our spades”; böz-e ama az ošksāli be-mard en “our goats died of drought.” In ergative constructions when the logical direct object is plural sometimes the verb (in fact the past participle) also takes the plural marker, e.g., dözz-e sarbāz-e-šun dar-kos-e “the thieves hit (past tense) the soldiers”; tura b-ame xiār-e hamö-š ba-xard-e “[a] jackal came [and] ate all the cucumbers.” More often, however, the verb is put in the singular, e.g., vacc-e (plur. of vacca) bāl-e-šun ar-get “the children picked up the spades.” Often the singular is used for the plural when the verb or a referring pronoun indicates the plural number, e.g., sarbāz ö döz da: vā-šun be-ka “the soldiers and the thieves quarreled.” Nouns in -a add the glide -y- before the plural marker (zumā-y-e “bridegrooms”). Plurals in -un occur rarely and appear not to be genuine at this stage of the language (my informant’s son who did not know the dialect as well as his father, used it more often). The dialect does not seem to have any special device for expressing definition.
Personal pronouns have two cases, direct case: a, tö, nön/nen (this/that), ama, šama, nü/nan (those/these); and oblique (possessive) case: men, ta, nön/nen, ama, šama, nuin/nömin. The direct forms are used as the subject of verbs (in the past tenses of transitive verbs if the agent is expressed also by a personal pronoun). My limited material has oblique forms only as genitive in eżāfa constructions, but judging by other Kāšāni dialects it was probably also used as object of verbs in non-ergative constructions and governed by pre- and postpositions. Examples: tö ba-št-i “you went,” nü ba-šun xard “they ate,” böz-e men-eš ba-köšt “he killed my goat,” dass-e ta nāgir-un “I do not take your hand.” The enclitic pronouns are -m, -d, -š, -mun, -dun, -šun. They are used as possessive pronouns and as direct and indirect object, e.g. raxt-em dar-em-puš “I put on my clothes,” ba-š-raγsin “make him dance!” In the ergative construction of the past tenses of transitive verbs, the agent is indicated by enclitic pronouns instead of personal endings. In verbs with a preverb and in compound verbs, the enclitic pronoun follows the preverb or the nominal complement; otherwise it is normally, but not necessarily, attached to the word immediately preceding the verb.
The verbal system is based on two stems, present and past, six persons, and two “modal” prefixes, namely ba-/be- for the imperative, the subjunctive, the preterit, and the periphrastic tenses (perfect, pluperfect, and perfect subjunctive), provided that the stem has no preverb or nominal complement (“plain” stem); and a- (durative or progressive tense marker) for the present/future and the imperfect. The personal endings are -un, -e, -e, -im, -id, -en for the tenses built on the present stem, i.e., present, subjunctive, and imperative, except that the ending of the 2nd pers. sing. imperative is nil; and -un, -i, nil, -im, -id, -en for the past tenses of intransitive verbs (the 2nd pers. sing. -e is sometimes narrowed into -i, and the 3rd pers. -e is sometimes opened into -a). The perfect stem is formed from the past stem by prefixing be-/ba- if the stem is plain and adding the perfect marker -a. The pluperfect is formed with the perfect stem and the preterit of “to be.” In the subjunctive perfect the auxiliary is the subjunctive of “to be.”
The negative and prohibitive prefix is na-, which, joined with the durative marker, produces nā-.
Examples of verb forms and constructions: Imperative: ba-fes, ba-fes-id “throw!” (irregular: bure [sing.], baid [plur.] “come!”); vā-gel “return!,” dāγ-ne “open!”. Present/future: a-ters-un, a-ters-e, etc. “I fear, you fear, etc.,” a-šun “I go, am going, shall go.” Present subjunctive: ba-tar-sid “(that) you fear,” age dar-ke “if he falls” (the subjunctive is used also for the conditional).
Past tenses of intransitive verbs: Imperfect: a-šd-un “I used to go,” a-tersā(-w)-un “I used to fear.” Preterite: ba-šö “he went,” ba-št-im “we went,” var-gelā “he returned,” ba-tarsā-v-i “you feared” (-v- or -w- are used as connective consonantal glides after back vowels). Perfect: mö men se passā ba-št-a Karbalā “my mother has gone three times to K.,” ba-ško-v-a “has dried,” vacca batt-a “the child has gone to sleep,” ba-tarso-w-a “has feared.” Pluperfect: ba-tarsā bö “had feared.” Perfect subjunctive: ba-vot-a bu “should have said.” Past tenses of transitive verbs: Imperfect: dar-m-a-puš “I was putting on [clothes].” Preterit: bāl-e men-eš ba-mart “he broke my spades.” Perfect: do sāat a raxt-em dar-em pušt-a “it is two hours since I put on my clothes” (the agent being -m-). Pluperfect: dar-em-pušd e bö “I had put on [clothes].”
A secondary past stem is made by adding -ā to the present stem. The causative stem is formed by adding -in to the present stem (past stem -in-ā), e.g., ba-vez “run!”, ba-š-vez-in “make him run,” ba-m-raγs-in-ā “I made him dance.” The passive is formed by adding -i to the present stem (past stem -i-ā), e.g., nā-pec-i-a “it does not get cooked” (nā- < na- + a-), dar-nā-bend i-a “it does not congeal” (lit. “it is not bound”). The infinitive is obtained by prefixing ba- and adding -an to the past stem, e.g., ba-šd-an ve az ba-med-an a “to go is better than to come.”
For “to want to” the auxiliary pia (past piā) is used with the present subjunctive. The agent is expressed by the enclitic pronouns, even in the present tenses. The enclitic pronouns are attached to the durative marker a- and precede pia (piā), e.g., a-d-pia ba-še ša: “you want to go to the town (i.e., Kāšān),” ama sāl-e bi a-mun-pia ba-šim Karbalā “next year we want to go to Karbalā,” ezze a-m-piā ba-šun ša:, na-gelā “yesterday I wanted to go to Kāšān (but] it did not turn [out possible].” For “must” the frozen form apia is employed with the present subjunctive, but the agent is expressed by the direct personal pronouns, e.g., tö apia de temen ā-da “you must give two tumans,” a nāpia “I must not,” Hasan apia ār-da “Ḥasan must give.”
The base h- is used for “to exist”; xodā ha, šaytun na-ha “God exists, the devil does not,” a hun tā b-ay “I stay (lit. am) until you come.” The 3rd sing. copula is a.
Lexicon. Following are some characteristic Bādrūdi words: pe:/bābā “father,” mo/mālá “mother,” xo “sister,” pür “son,” jen “woman,” bāγsura “wife’s father,” xasrü “wife’s mother,” mali “cat,” kua “dog,” maš “fly,” karg “hen,” gorg “wolf,” guja “calf,” düm “face,” börma “weeping,” katta “wooden shovel,” ruj “day,” sabā “tomorrow,” perā “day after tomorrow,” pišim “noon,” diar “afternoon,” uz “walnut,” tüm “seed,” venow “ash tree,” yört “room,” kada “house,” asejan “broom,” mārenju “sparrow,” dale “a little,” bi “other, next,” eten “now,” ru “in,” ba-ver “tear!”, vā-derz-/vā-dešt “to sew,” ba-ve “weave!”, jen-/jet “to strike, play (an instrument) ,” kod-/kos “to hit.”
Bibliography:
For comparison with related dialects see Christensen, Contributions I, pp. 124ff.; E. Yarshater, “The Jewish Communities of Iran and their Dialects,” in Mémorial Jean de Menasce, ed. Ph. Gignoux and A. Tafazzoli, Paris, 1974, pp. 458ff.; idem “Distinction of Grammatical Gender in the Dialects of Kashan Province and the Adjoining Areas,” in Papers in Honour of Professor Mary Boyce II, Acta Iranica 25, Leiden, 1985, pp. 727ff.; V. A. Zhukovskiĭ, Materialy dlya izucheniya persidskikh narechiĭ I, St. Petersburg, 1888 (dialects of the region of Kāšān, etc.).
Search terms:
| بادرودی | badroodi | baadroodi | badroody |
| baadroody | baadroudi | badroudi | baadrody |
(E. Yarshater)
Originally Published: December 15, 1988
Last Updated: August 22, 2011
This article is available in print.
Vol. III, Fasc. 4, pp. 383-385
E. Yarshater, “BĀDRŪDI,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, III/4, pp. 383-385, available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/badrudi (accessed on 30 December 2012).
