The Gilaki language is a Caspian language, and a member of the northwestern Iranian language branch, spoken in Iran''s Gīlān Province. Gilaki is closely related to Mazandarani and the two dialects have similar vocabularies. The Gilaki and Mazandarani languages (but not other Iranian languages) share certain typological features with Caucasian languages, of which Tat is one of them, reflecting the history, ethnic identity, and close relatedness to the Caucasus region and Caucasian peoples of the Gilaki people and Mazandarani people.

• 1 Internal classification
• 2 Phonology
• 3 Verb system
  • 3.1 Present tenses
    • 3.1.1 Present indicative
    • 3.1.2 Present subjunctive
  • 3.2 Past tenses
    • 3.2.1 Preterite
    • 3.2.2 Imperfect
    • 3.2.3 Pluperfect
    • 3.2.4 Past subjunctive
  • 3.3 Progressive
    • 3.3.1 Present progressive
    • 3.3.2 Past progressive
  • 3.4 Compound verbs
• 4 Nouns, cases and postpositions
  • 4.1 Cases
    • 4.1.1 Nouns
    • 4.1.2 Pronouns
  • 4.2 Postpositions
• 5 Adjectives
  • 5.1 Possessive Constructions
• 6 Vocabulary
• 7 Comparison of Gilaki, Kurdish and Balochi
• 8 See also
• 9 Notes
• 10 Further reading
• 11 External links

The language is divided into three dialects: Western Gilaki, Eastern Gilaki, and Galeshi (in the mountains of Gilan). Furthermore, the Gilaki language is closely related to Mazanderani, and the two languages have similar vocabularies.The western and eastern dialects are separated by the Sefid River. According to Ethnologue, there were more than 3 million native speakers of Gilaki in 1993.

Gilaki has the same consonants as Persian, but different vowels. Here is a table of correspondences for the Western Gilaki of Rasht (as will be the variety used in the remainder of the article):

The consonants are:

The verb system of Gilaki is very similar to that of Persian. All infinitives end in -tən/-dən, or in -V:n, where V: is a long vowel (from contraction of an original *-Vdən). The present stem is usually related to the infinitive, and the past stem is just the infinitive without -ən or -n (in the case of vowel stems).

From the infinitive dín, "to see", we get present stem din-.

The present indicative is formed by adding the personal endings to this stem:

The present subjunctive is formed with the prefix bí-, bú-, or bə- (depending on the vowel in the stem) added to the indicative forms. Final /e/ neutralizes to /ə/ in the 3rd singular and the plural invariably lacks final /i/.

The negative of both the indicative and the subjunctive is formed in the same way, with n- instead of the b- of the subjunctive.

From xurdən, "to eat", we get the perfect stem xurd. To this are added unaccented personal endings and the unaccented b- prefix (or accented n- for the negative):

The imperfect is formed with what was originally a suffix -i:

The pluperfect is paraphrastically formed with the verb bon, "to be", and the past participle, which is in turn formed with the perfect stem+ə (which can assimilate to become i or u). The accent can fall on the last syllable of the participle or on the stem itself:

A curious innovation of Western Gilaki is the past subjunctive, which is formed with the (artificial) imperfect of bon+past participle:

This form is often found in the protasis and apodosis of unreal conditions, e.g., mən agə Əkbəra bidé bim, xušhal bubosti bim, "If I were to see/saw/had seen Akbar, I would be happy".

There are two very common paraphrastic constructions for the present and past progressives. From the infinitive šon, "to go", we get:

There are many compound verbs in Gilaki, whose forms differ slightly from simple verbs. Most notably, bV- is never prefixed onto the stem, and the negative prefix nV- can act like an infix -n-, coming between the prefix and the stem. So from fagiftən, "to get", we get present indicative fagirəm, but present subjunctive fágirəm, and the negative of both, faángirəm or fanígirəm. The same applies to the negative of the past tenses: fángiftəm or fanígiftəm.

Gilaki employs a combination of quasi-case endings and postpositions to do the work of many particles and prepositions in English and Persian.

There are essentially three "cases" in Gilaki, the nominative (or, better, unmarked, as it can serve other grammatical functions), the genitive, and the (definite) accusative. The accusative form is often used to express the simple indirect object in addition to the direct object. A noun in the genitive comes before the word it modifies. These "cases" are in origin actually just particles, similar to Persian ra.

For the word "per", father, we have:

The genitive can change to -i, especially before some postpositions.

The 1st and 2nd person pronouns have special forms:

The 3rd person (demonstrative) pronouns are regular: /un/, /u.ˈʃan/, /i.ˈʃan/

With the genitive can be combined many postpositions. Examples:

The personal pronouns have special forms with "-re": mere, tere, etc.

Gilaki adjectives come before the noun they modify, and may have the genitive "case ending" -ə/-i. They do not agree with the nouns they modify.

• Example for adjectival modification: Western Gilaki: pilla-yi zakan (big children), Surx gul (red flower). Eastern Gilaki: Sərd aw (cold water) (ɑb-e særd in Persian), kul čaqu (dull knife) (čaqu-ye kond in Persian).

• Examples for possessive constructions of nouns in Western Gilaki: məhin zakan (Mæhin''s children) (Bæče-ha-ye Mæhin in Persian), Baγi gulan (garden flowers) (Gol-ha-ye Baγ in Persian). In Eastern Gilaki: Xirsi Kuti (bear cub) (Bæč-e Xers in Persian).