Persian Dialects in Khuzestan - Phonology

Phonology

Persian dialects of Khuzestan are halfway between north Iranian dialects and Dari dialects, or midway between Modern and Classical Persian dialects.

1. Word-final in Classical Persian is allophonized to, except ('no').
2. The long vowels of Classical Persian and merged into Modern Persian, and and merged into .
3. Arabic letter و is realized as a voiced labiodental fricative .
4. The convergence of the Arabic pronunciations of ق (voiced uvular stop ) and غ (voiced velar fricative ) in Tehrani Persian and other north Iranian dialects (probably influenced by Turkic languages like Azeri and Turkmen), is still kept separate in Khuzestani dialects, as is in Classican Persian and as all southern Iranian dialects are, most partly because of the Arab Iranian population of Khuzestan.
5. Like Tehrani accent and also most of the accents in Central and Southern Iran, the sequence /ɒn/ in the colloquial dialect is nearly always pronounced . The only common exceptions are high prestige words, such as ('Qur'an'), and ('Iran'), and foreign nouns (both common and proper), like the Spanish surname Beltran, which are pronounced as written. A few words written as /ɒm/ are pronounced . /ɒm/ and /ɒn/ are pronounced as they are in formal dialect.

Note that native Khuzestani Persian speakers can interchange colloquial and formal dialects in conversational speech.