The Khalaj Alphabet

Khalaj (Turkic Khalaj) is an endangered Turkic language ^[1] spoken by approximately 42,000 people in central Iran. It is considered the most linguistically divergent living Turkic language — forming its own separate branch within the Turkic family, distinct from all other groups including Turkish, Uzbek, and Kazakh.

Khalaj is uniquely important for historical linguistics because it preserves proto-Turkic long vowels (ā, ī, ū) that disappeared from all other modern Turkic languages — a living window into the ancestral Turkic language spoken over a millennium ago.

Khalaj uses a 32-letter Perso-Arabic script ^[2], written right-to-left. This is the same script used for Persian (Farsi) in Iran — 28 Arabic letters plus 4 Persian additions: پ (p-sound), چ (ch-sound), ژ (zh-sound), and گ (g-sound).

Because Khalaj speakers live in an Iranian-Persian cultural context, they use the Perso-Arabic script of Iranian literary tradition. There is no separate Khalaj-specific script — the same Perso-Arabic orthography used for Persian is adapted for Khalaj sounds.

The preservation of proto-Turkic long vowels in Khalaj is one of the great mysteries of Turkic linguistics ^[1]. Most scholars believe Khalaj separated from the main Turkic family at a very early date — before the major westward Turkic migrations spread other languages across Central Asia.

By remaining isolated in central Iran, surrounded by Persian speakers, the Khalaj community may have retained archaic phonological features that other Turkic groups lost during contact-driven language change. This makes Khalaj the primary evidence source for reconstructing the vowel system of proto-Turkic.

Khalaj speakers are concentrated in Markazi Province ^[1] in central Iran, particularly around the towns of Khalajestan (also called Khalajabad) and surrounding villages. The region lies south of Tehran and northeast of Isfahan.

The total Khalaj-speaking area is relatively small — a cluster of villages in a mountainous region. This geographic isolation, surrounded by Persian-speaking communities, is believed to explain why Khalaj has retained so many archaic features while other Turkic languages nearby, such as Azerbaijani, underwent significant change.

The historical origin of Khalaj in central Iran is debated among scholars ^[1]. The most widely accepted theory holds that Khalaj-speaking Turkic tribes settled in the region during the early medieval period, possibly during the 1st millennium CE, before most Turkic migrations into the region.

An alternative view links Khalaj to the Ghilzai tribe of Afghanistan, though this connection is contested. What is agreed is that Khalaj has been in its current location for a very long time — long enough to diverge dramatically from all other Turkic languages and develop its uniquely archaic character.

Khalaj is related to both Turkish and Azerbaijani as a fellow Turkic language ^[2], but it is the most distantly related of all living Turkic languages to those two. Turkish and Azerbaijani are both Oghuz Turkic — Khalaj belongs to a completely separate branch called Khalaj (Arghu).

Despite geographic proximity to Azerbaijani (which is widespread in Iran), Khalaj shows no closer relationship to it than to any other Turkic language. The two languages are mutually unintelligible. Khalaj borrowed heavily from Persian, however, reflecting its long immersion in Iranian cultural and linguistic life.

Yes — Khalaj is classified as severely endangered ^[1]. With only ~42,000 speakers concentrated in a small cluster of villages in central Iran, the language faces intense pressure from Persian, which dominates all official and educational domains.

Younger generations in Khalajestan are increasingly shifting to Persian as their primary language. The academic importance of Khalaj to Turkic linguistics has generated some scholarly documentation efforts, but no significant governmental language support exists — making long-term survival uncertain.

The Khalaj Perso-Arabic alphabet of 32 letters ^[2] is written from right to left. The letters include all standard Arabic consonants — ا، ب، ت، ث، ج، ح، خ، د، ذ، ر، ز، س، ش، ص، ض، ط، ظ، ع، غ، ف، ق، ک، ل، م، ن، و، ه، ي — plus the four Persian letters پ، چ، ژ، گ.

Unlike some Turkic languages (Uyghur, Uzbek) that have specially extended Perso-Arabic alphabets to represent Turkic vowels, the Khalaj script relies on the standard Perso-Arabic convention of minimal vowel marking. Vowels are largely implied by context, as is traditional in Arabic and Persian scripts.