Luri
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Luri (Persian: لری [loriː], [luriː]) is a Southwestern Iranian language spoken mainly by the Lur and Bakhtiari peoples of the Iranian provinces of Lorestan, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad and parts of Khuzestan and Esfahan province and Fars provinces. Lori is a descendant of a variant of Middle Persian and is lexically similar to modern Persian.
According to the linguist Don Stilo: "Persian, Lori-Baḵtiāri and others, are derived directly from Old Persian through Middle Persian/Pahlavi". These dialects are also referred to as the “Persid” southern Zagros group.
The special character of the Lori language suggests that its spreading area was Iranicized from Persia and not from Media. Lori also represents a language continuum between Persian language and Kurdish language varieties, and is itself composed of three distinct languages: Loristani, Bakhtiari and Southern Lori.[5] According to John Limbert, "Luri and Bakhtiari are much more closely related to Persian, than Kurdish." Traditionally, Lori has been categorised as a single language. Some scholars have stated that Lori is only a highly accented or لهجه (lahjeh) form of Persian. On the other hand, some researchers are supporting the division of the Lori continuum into more than one language.
According to Encyclopædia Iranica, "All Lori dialects closely resemble standard Persian and probably developed from a stage of Persian similar to that represented in Early New Persian texts written in Perso-Arabic script. The sole typical Lori feature not known in early New Persian or derivable from it is the inchoative marker (see below), though even this is found in Judeo-Persian texts". There do exist transitional dialects between Southern Kurdish and Lori-Bakhtiāri, and Lori-Bakhtiāri itself may be called a transitional idiom between Kurdish and Persian. "According to Sharaf Khan Bidlisi a sixteenth century historian, in his history book Sharafnama" Lurs are one of the four Kurdish tribe. However Vladimir Minorsky comments on this that the Lur and Guran stand apart from Kurdish in the modern sense for both linguistic and ethnological reasons. (Wikipedia)