بررسي ريشه‌شناختي منتخبي از واژگان گويش بوشهري‌

An Etymological and Comparative Survey of Some Words in the Bushehri Dialect

Introduction Etymology is a Greek term which has been borrowed by other European languages, In Greek it means the study of ʹetymonʹ (the true meaning of a word), The term in modern times has corne to mean the history of a linguistic form (as a word) shown by tracing its development since its earliest recorded occurrence in the language where it is found, This is usually done by tracing its transmission from one language to another, by analyzing it into its component parts, by identifying its cognates in other languages, or hy tracing its cognates to a common ancestral form in an ancesuallanguage (Merriam- Webster online dictionary), A dialect is a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language speakers, Thc term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors. such as a social factor, Ethnic languages and regional dialects in different countries, especially in the third world countries are under increasing social and political pressure, With the current trend of language loss, it is expected that the languages that hove less than SOO speakers will die within the 21st Century, IYarmohammadi,20(2) Dialects are human treasures that contain centuries of culture within themselves, They can be preserved by scientific investigation using data collection techniques and electronic storage, As a result, the raw material for other language studies will be provided, It is thus very likely that the influx of many foreign words into Persian may be avoided. Methods Two methods of data collection are employed in this study. The first one was going through field study procedures; using a tape-recorder, the researcher had interviews with a group of respondents whose age ranged from 50 to 70 including both literate an illiterate ones. The second procedure was that of library research. In this way the researcher did an investigation in the reference materials on the Bushehri dialect. Hence, some study on the etymology of the words was comparatively done. An attempt has been made to study some Bushehri words etymologically, comparing them with words from other Iranian dialects. The presentation of the analysis is based on Persian alphabet. Discussion and Conclusion Bushehri is a new Iranian dialect which has native speakers in the southern port of Bushehr. This dialect is 110W under intense pressure from Persian as a huge number. of Persian words have replaced the indigenous Bushchri words. This is due to the expansion of Persian literacy and instrucrio» among urban and rural people, the profusion of mass media such as radio and television, newspapers, magazines and new technologies which are all presented in Persian. Like many other dialects, Bushehri is going through the process of dcrneruion and eventual death. Thereby, The indigenous vocabulary is unknown among the leamed and the youth. The syntactic and phonological change in Bushchri is different from that of vocabulary. The syntactic and phonological change in this dialect is very slow but the change in the vocabulary is much quicker. Through etymological and comparative studies on dialects, an atlas of Iranian dialects could be compiled. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature can harrow common words from the Iranian dialects in their search. By doing etymological analysis of the lexical items among different dialects, one can come to an understanding of the relationship between dialects.