Gilaki Language

If you ask the people of Mazandaran what language they speak, it is often said that they speak Gilaki. This surprises many researchers as this language in various sources is known as Tabari or Mazandarani, and the word Gilaki is a well-known term that is commonly used for the language of the people of Gilan. The author believes that the use of the term Gilaki for the language of the people of Mazandaran is an example of "semantic extension". Accordingly, the semantic of the word Gilak has changed over time from its original meaning (i.e. "Gilani") to the general meaning "farmer" and "rural"; therefore, when the people of Mazandaran call their language Gilaki, they refer to their local language, and the use of this term for Mazandarani language is not related to Gilaki language of Gilan.

Objective acoustic measurements leading to normative data pave the path for clinical, dialectological, and speech recognition research. Voice acoustic analysis, including fundamental frequency (F0), Jitter, Shimmer, and Harmonics-to-Noise Ratio (HNR) were extracted from data to analyze the acoustic Features of male Gilaki-speaking adults’ voice. Forty normal male Gilaki speakers participated in this research. In order to conduct a typological analysis, the results of these experiments are compared with those reported by Dehghan et al. (2010) who investigated objective voice analysis of Persian Speakers’ normal voices. Results of our research on F0, the Gilaki speakers’ voice is more bass compared to their Persian-speaking peers. Jitter and Shimmer are significantly different in the two target groups. Moreover, HNR shows distinctive difference between the Gilaki-speaking group and the control group. The high scores of Jitter, Shimmer, and HNR can indicate problems in the phonation of the individuals. This is the case with our Gilaki-speaking sample who recorded considerably higher amounts for each of the acoustic parameters than their Persian-speaking peers. The results call for a deeper research into a wider population regarding Jitter, Shimmer, and HNR rates and perhaps it reveals the need for clinical and pathological attention.