Gilaki Alphabet

Gilaki (گیلکی in Persian spelling, گیلٚکی with its own vowel mark) is a Northwestern Iranian language of the Caspian group, the language of the Gilak people of Gilan province on the southwest shore of the Caspian Sea. Its closest relative is Mazanderani, spoken just to the east; it is related to Persian but is not a dialect of it, and has its own vowels, grammar and vocabulary.

Gilaki has no official standard and is not a school language: Persian is the language of education and print, and Gilaki speakers read and write Persian. When people write Gilaki, in poetry, song lyrics, local magazines, messages and the Gilaki Wikipedia, they use the Persian alphabet, so every consonant on this page is on a Persian keyboard. پ p, چ ch, ژ zh and گ g are the four letters Persian added to the Arabic alphabet, and ک and ی are the Persian forms of kaf and ye. Several letters share one sound because they keep the spelling of Arabic words: ث س ص are all s, ذ ز ض ظ are all z, ت ط are t, and ح ه are h.

The main dialect split follows the Sefid Rud river: Western Gilaki around Rasht and Fuman, and Eastern Gilaki around Lahijan, Langarud and Rudsar. The Galesh, herders of the forested Alborz slopes above the plain, speak their own variety, often called Galeshi.

Writing Gilaki vowels: the small v ٚ for ə

The Persian script writes long vowels with letters, ا for ā, و for u and ی for i, and leaves short vowels out. That works for Persian readers who know the words, but Gilaki words are less familiar on paper, so Gilaki writers often use the optional vowel signs: zebar َ for a, pish ُ for o, zir ِ for e, and sokun ْ over a consonant with no vowel after it.

Gilaki also has a central vowel ə, the sound of the a in English about, and the Persian script has no sign for it. Many Gilaki writers, the Gilaki Wikipedia among them, mark it with the small v above the letter, Unicode U+065A ARABIC VOWEL SIGN SMALL V ABOVE: ٚ. The language's own name shows it: گیلٚکی, Giləki. Not every writer uses it, and spellings still vary from author to author.

Tashdid ّ doubles a consonant, the tanvin signs ً ٌ ٍ appear in Arabic words such as حتماً (hatman, certainly), and the hamza forms أ ؤ ئ ء and ة come in words borrowed through Persian. As in Persian, the invisible zero-width non-joiner (U+200C) keeps the parts of a compound apart without a space.

Punctuation, Persian digits and the rial sign

Gilaki writing follows Iranian Persian conventions: the comma ، and semicolon ؛ turned upside down, the mirrored question mark ؟ and guillemets « » for quotations. The full stop and exclamation mark are the ordinary . and !.

Numbers are written with Persian digits ۰ ۱ ۲ ۳ ۴ ۵ ۶ ۷ ۸ ۹, which run left to right inside right-to-left text; ۴ ۵ ۶ look different from the Arabic-Indic ٤ ٥ ٦ used in Arabic, so copy the Persian set. The percent sign is ٪, the decimal separator ٫ and the thousands separator ٬. Money is the Iranian rial, written ﷼ or ریال, although prices are usually said in toman (تومان), ten rials.

How to type the Gilaki alphabet

Use a Persian keyboard: it is built into Windows, macOS, Android and iOS and has every letter on this page. Avoid an Arabic keyboard: it types the Arabic kaf ك and ye ي instead of the Persian ک and ی, which look alike in the middle of a word but are different characters, so searches miss the words.

The standard Persian keyboard has no key for the Gilaki ə sign ٚ. Copy it from this page and paste it right after the letter it sits on, or in Microsoft Word type 065A and press Alt+X. Other Word codes: 067E gives پ, 0686 چ, 0698 ژ, 06AF گ, 06A9 ک, 06CC ی, 064E zebar, 0650 zir, 064F pish and FDFC ﷼. In HTML use numeric references such as ٚ, and set dir="rtl" and lang="glk" on the text so it runs right to left.

Where Gilaki is spoken

Gilaki is spoken in northern Iran 🇮🇷, in Gilan province between the Caspian Sea and the Alborz mountains: in Rasht, the provincial capital, in Lahijan, Langarud, Rudsar, Fuman, Anzali and the villages of the rice plain. CLDR estimates about 4 million speakers; other estimates differ, and many Gilaks now live in Tehran and other Iranian cities, where children often grow up speaking Persian only.

Gilan is the wettest corner of Iran, a green land of rice paddies 🌾, tea gardens 🍵 on the hills around Lahijan, Hyrcanian forest 🌲 on the mountain slopes and fishing on the Caspian 🌊🐟. Rasht is known as the city of rain ☔ and for its cooking: mirza ghasemi of smoked eggplant 🍆, garlic 🧄 and egg, and baghala ghatogh of fava beans, dill and egg, eaten with rice. Related languages with their own collections are Mazanderani, Talysh and Persian; the Iran collection has the country's flag, food and emoji.