LITMIR.BIZ

      To pronounce a term with confidence, it helps to know the word’s linguistic lineage. This is not always possible, but the table of systematic correspondences of sounds and spellings on the previous page will guide the reader in making an educated guess.

      It can be seen from several of the examples how, once the language context has been established from one orthographic feature, other conventions become clear. Since in “Chichaoua” (a town in Morocco) ch must be French for sh, the ou lurking between two other vowels must represent w, to yield a pronunciation shishawa. German-processed “Zejwa” and “chalat” will respond to similar reasoning. Occasional words imported into Italian or Spanish will, of course, follow the conventions established for, say, e and g in those languages.

      TURKISH.

      Since 1928 Turkish (in the narrower sense of the term, i.e. the language of the Republic of Turkey) has used the Latin alphabet with a completely regular orthography. Those few letters that do not approximate English usage are as follows.

      c: j as in jog, e.g. cicim.

      ç : ch as in chip , e.g. Çanakkale.

      ı: e as in the or i in sir , e.g. Topkapı.

      ş : sh as in ship , e.g. Uşak.

      ğ : silent; lengthens the preceding vowel, e.g. Niğde (nee-deh).

      ö: approx. as in nurse , with lips rounded; German böse , French peu , e.g. Gördes (=Ghiordes).

      ü: approx. as in few , with lips rounded; German für , French lune , e.g. Yörük.

      In Turkish words, each syllable is pronounced separately: Tekke is tek-keh. The vowels a, e, i, o, u are pronounced approximately as in Spanish.

      The designation “Turk.” for the language of origin generally means modern Turkish or its ancestor, Ottoman Turkish. However, it may also stand for “Turkic,” an adjective embracing the closely related language family of the Azerbaijani Turks, Turkmens, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kirghiz and Qashqa’i. A term designated as “Turk.” may be common to two or more of these varieties of Turkish, and particularly in its transcribed form it may not be possible to assign it a definitive origin. Most of these languages are spoken in the Russian Caucasus and Central Asia, and were originally transcribed with the Cyrillic alphabet: see the “Russian” column in the preceding table.

      Some of the Turkic languages have consonants which may be written as q, kh, and gh (see under Persian). These are usually equivalent to the modern Turkish k, h, and ğ respectively (e.g. qanât, kanat). The vowel y in Turkic words transliterated through Russian is equivalent to the undotted i (e.g. “asmalyk”).

      PERSIAN AND ARABIC.

      Persian was for many centuries both the principal literary language and the spoken lingua franca of the eastern Islamic world, supplementing Turkic, Kurdish, Pashto, Baluch, and other vernaculars. It is still widely used in Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan as well as Iran. As such it has borrowed freely from other local languages and in turn provided them with vocabulary of its own and many terms taken from Arabic.

      Most terms of Arabic origin that appear in this lexicon have been “processed” through Persian. Persian still uses a modified form of Arabic script, and systems of transliteration are almost identical for the two languages. It is thus convenient to treat them together from the viewpoint of unfamiliar sounds and spellings.

      dh: (Arabic only) like th as in the, wither, e.g. dhar’ (see “zar”).

      gh: like French uvular r, but produced even farther back in the throat (Arabic, Turkic langs, e.g. Ghormaj). In Persian of Iran it is pronounced the same as q, e.g. ghermez.

      kh: like ch as in German Bach , Scottish loch . E.g. Khila, Bakhtiari.

      q: like k, but farther back in the throat, e.g. Qajar.

      â: In Persian, long “a” as in raw or war; to be distinguished from a , as in bat , e.g. Râvar, kenâreh. In Arabic and Turkish, generally the long equivalent of a , e.g. salât, lâle.

      The apostrophe is used to represent one of two letters sounded differently in Arabic, but pronounced identically in Persian, as a slight hiatus between vowels (Sa’idâbâd) or between vowel and consonant (Za’farânlu). The vowels a, e, i, o, u are pronounced approximately as in Spanish. The other letters and combinations used are roughly equivalent to English usage or otherwise self-evident.

      Adjacent letters found in transliterations of Turkish, Persian, etc., may sometimes stand for separate letters (hence distinct sounds) and not the combinations listed above: thus Akhisar is Ak-hisar, Mashhad is Mash-had.

      FORMATIVES.

      There are several suffixes in Persian and Turkish used to form adjectives or otherwise expand the meaning of a base word in predictable ways. The most common of these, and their typical uses in rug terminology, are as follows.

      -âbâd (Persian): forms names of inhabited places, settlements, cities, e.g. Meshkâbâd (from meshk , “musk”).

      -dân (Persian): “container,” e.g. qâshoq-dân, “spoonbag.”

      -i (Persian and Arabic): forms an attributive adjective and related nouns, “from/belonging to a place, tribe, etc.; characterized by,” e.g. Baluchi, “of the Baluch people,” aksi, “pictorial,” from aks “picture.”

      -li, -lu (Turk.): similar in function to -i, e.g. parmakli, “fingerlike, finger-shaped” (parmak, “finger”); Qaragözlü, tribal name (qara göz, “black eye”).

      -lik, -luk, -lyk (Turk.): something made for, appropriate to, or containing the base referent, e.g. eyerlik, “saddle cloth” (eyer, “saddle”).

      CHINESE PLACE NAMES.

      Since about 1975 the so-called Pinyin system of romanization has been universally accepted for Chinese geographical names. Thus the older form “Peking” is written “Beijing,” which more closely approximates the sound of the Chinese word in the Mandarin dialect. This standard is adopted for Chinese place names in this lexicon, with cross-references to variant spellings. The only relevant conventions of Pinyin that do not approximate English usage are as follows.

      x: like sh as in ship , e.g. Xinjiang (shin-jang).

      zh: like j as in job , e.g. Guizhou (gway-joe).

      The traditional spellings are retained for place names in East Turkestan, such as “Khotan,” since these are familiar in rug literature.

      A

      aba (Arabic). A striped fabric or a sleeveless, loose outer garment. Also, a heavy wool cloth.

      Abadah. See “Abâdeh.”

      Abâdeh, Abadah. A town in southwestern Iran on the highway be tween Isfahan and Shiraz. Some rugs woven in this town have designs similar to Persian city rugs. Others copy local tribal rugs. Knot density is about 80 to 160 symmetric knots per square inch on a cotton foundation. Wefts are sometimes dyed blue. See “Iran.”

      Abâdeh carpet Dilmaghani & Co.

      Abbas I, Shah. Abbas I, called “the Great,” shah of Persia, reigned from 1587 to 1629. In wars with the Uzbeks, Ottoman Turks, and Portuguese, he consolidated the dominion of Persia from the Tigris to the Indus. His reign was distinguished by a magnificent court, the construction of mosques and public buildings, and a great expansion of commerce. He established workshops which produced carpets

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