Gilakispeaking

Gilakispeaking refers to the use of Gilaki, a Northwestern Iranian language spoken primarily in Gilan Province along the Caspian Sea in northern Iran. As a member of the Caspian subgroup of Northwestern Iranian languages, Gilaki is closely related to Mazandarani and shares features with other regional languages while remaining distinct from Persian.

Geographic distribution and dialects: Gilaki is most widely spoken in Gilan, with regional variation across urban and rural communities. Smaller speaker populations exist in neighboring provinces and among Iranian diaspora communities abroad. Dialectal variation is significant, with forms collectively referred to as Gilaki proper and peripheral varieties that differ in phonology and lexicon.

Linguistic features and writing: Gilaki typically follows a subject–object–verb word order and uses a system of affixes and clitics to convey grammatical relations and tense. The language has borrowed vocabulary from Persian and other languages while retaining its own lexical and syntactic characteristics. It is usually written in the Persian script (Persian-Arabic alphabet), though some academic and descriptive works employ Latin transliterations.

Sociolinguistic status: Gilaki remains a regional language with bilingual speakers who also use Persian. Language transmission is uneven, with stronger intergenerational use in rural areas and among cultural communities, and greater dominance of Persian in urban settings and formal domains. Preservation efforts include linguistic documentation, local media in Gilaki, and cultural associations that promote literature, poetry, and heritage, contributing to ongoing language maintenance and discourse about its status.