Language maintenance or shift? Attitudes of Karingani youth towards their mother tongue in Tabriz

Karingani is one of around 62 indigenous languages of Iran. It is a minority language spoken in Karingan village and Dizmar and Hasanu districts on northwest of Iran. The goals of the study are to investigate language attitudes of the informants and evaluate language vitality and to the best of my knowledge this is the first study describing the sociolinguistic status of the language. The focus of the investigation was 15-30 years old. Qualitative and quantitative data on language attitudes and patterns of language use indicate that Karingani is under increasing pressure of loss and there are prominent factors of a shift to Azerbaijani and Persian. The results show that informants use Azerbaijani frequently, even in domains where they could use their mother tongue, e.g. when speaking to peers from the same mother tongue. In addition, in response to the question which language(s) would you like to speak to your children? a large majority indicated they would teach their children Azerbaijani Turkish, Persian and English), showing no clear conviction and commitment to Karingani.