Towards Mapping out A Gilaki Dialect Atlas

Linguistic Atlas consists of a series of maps locating language diversities in a geographical area. It is significant because it maintains the needs of dialectology, language planning and sociolinguistics. Due to the fact that there is no such an atlas for Gilan Province, the writers of this article have done their best to design one, based on 100 words; meanwhile, following the findings of this atlas, they try to answer two questions: what phonological processes can be seen in Gilan and Gilaki dialect? How do the central towns of Gilan differ from its other towns regarding the occurrence of phonological processes? It should be pointed out that another advantage of such an atlas is the possibility of depicting the boundary lines among Gilaki, Taleshi, and Turkish in Gilan Province.After selecting 100 words and interviewing with the Gilaki speakers and recording their voices, the researchers designed a map for each word to show its phonological and lexical diversities. According to the findings of research, 16 phonological processes take place in Gilaki dialect, of which the most frequent are respectively centralization, rising, deletion and affrication. It was also found that in non-central towns especially Roodsar, the phonological processes are more frequent.