Talyshi

the language of the Talyshin. Spoken in the southern part of the Azerbaijan SSR and in contiguous Iran, Talyshi belongs to the northwestern group of the Iranian languages. It has several dialects, of which the most important is the Lenkoran dialect.

Talyshi is an analytic language. Its phonetic features include the wide use of a reduced vowel represented by the symbol b and extensive assimilation of vowels. The language is inflected and has oblique case forms for nouns, as well as several simple verb forms, for example, the optative and the augmented form of the imperfect. A unique feature of Talyshi is an analytic form of the present tense that is formed from the infinitive.

Talyshi has a well-developed system of postpositions, which are often used in combination with prepositions. Transitive verbs in some forms of the past tense require an ergative sentence construction. In attributive constructions, the attribute with the marker -a precedes the dependent member.