Borrowing Strategies from Turkish in Colloquial Contemporary Persian

This study aimed at investigating different strategies of loaning words from Turkish in colloquial Persian. To this end, colloquial Persian dictionary by Abolhasan Najafi was used for extrapolating Turkish or partly Turkish entries that were closely scrutinized. The results indicated that colloquial Persian implements loanwords from Turkish in three ways: 1. Combined loanwords in which the half of the relevant Turkish word is borrowed and combined with another half of the colloquial Persian word. The present study identified two types of this process including phonetic copying (Aleh va Bbaleh kardan) and making new words and combinations with Turkish words (aleshi). 2. Structural loaning that was found in two forms: firstly, in the form of short sentences that are used in colloquial Persian (Boo door ke var) and secondly grammatical forms in the form of descriptive phrases (yalanchi pahlevan) or noun adjuncts (khale ghezi). 3. Direct word loaning that is the most frequently observed process based on which Turkish words are used in colloquial Persian with no change in pronunciation or meaning (moshtologh), with changes in pronunciation and meaning (ayagh), only with pronunciation change (doostagh chi), or only with meaning change (yer be yer). Turkish loanwords are used in a variety of semantic fields including kinship, threat, foods and drinks, curses and insults, assault and battery, words pertaining to animals, clothes and related concepts, court and military, body parts, professions, and agriculture. In general, loaning processes from Turkish into colloquial Persian has led to verbal and semantic expansion and enrichment of Persian.