# Origin of the sound ch [tʃ] تش



## GoldBug

Moderator note:
This discussion started here.


We know why they use تشاي (_chaai_​) in the Gulf states. (Because of the Persian CH.... influence.)...no problem understanding that.

[...]


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## WadiH

I don't understand why people on this forum always posit a Persian influence whenever they hear the sound "ch" in Arabic.  The reason it is called "Chai" in the Gulf is because that's what it's called in India, which is where tea comes from. No need for a Persian influence here.  The "ch" phoneme in Arabic has nothing to do with Persian.


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## clevermizo

You are right that Persian has nothing to do with the sound [tʃ]. In this case that is from Chinese, which is where tea comes from ( 茶 (cha [tʂa])). All words for tea around the world derive from one of a couple Chinese dialectal words for tea due to trade in East Asia. For what it's worth, according to the wiki on tea, the pronunciation [chai] with a final diphthong is Persian in origin, but I don't have knowledge of that myself.

But that doesn't change your point, I'm just being nit-picky  . تشاي is global pronunciation so it's not surprising to hear it in Arabic either, although شاي is standard and more common in other parts of the Arabic speaking world.


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## WadiH

Thanks, Mizo.  While the word "chai" may ultimately come from China, I still think the Gulf Arabs borrowed the word via India.  The people of the Gulf have always had very strong links with India and Indian borrowings are common in the dialects of the Gulf.


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## GoldBug

Wadi Hanifa said:


> I don't understand why people on this forum always posit a Persian influence whenever they hear the sound "ch" in Arabic. The reason it is called "Chai" in the Gulf is because that's what it's called in India, which is where tea comes from. No need for a Persian influence here. The "ch" phoneme in Arabic has nothing to do with Persian.



Well, the reason most people believe the sound "ch" in Gulf Arabic comes from Persian is because it does. Perhaps the word CHAI is an exception and I'll be happy to concede that CHAI is either a direct borrowing from India (and ultimately China) rather than Persian.

But almost everywhere else, the Arabic CH sound is from Persian. "samech" (fish) ...ismich (your (f.) name) and so on. If I'm wrong (I'm no expert), please let me know.


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## WadiH

GoldBug said:


> But almost everywhere else, the Arabic CH sound is from Persian. "samech" (fish) ...ismich (your (f.) name) and so on. If I'm wrong (I'm no expert), please let me know.



This has nothing to do with Persian either.  This is a well-known phenomenon known as "affrication" or "palatalization" which occurs in many languages independently.  For example, it's why "c" in Italian is pronounced [k] in "Carlo" but [ch] in "Ciro".  In certain Arabic dialects, the same phenomenon leads [g] to become [dj] or [dz] (depending on dialect) and [k] to become [ch] or [ts] (also depending on dialect). This is attested even by the grammarians of Classical Arabic.

The phenomena [g]>[dj] and [k]>[ch] are a feature of the old dialects of the Arabian tribes of Iraq and Syria and extend to the rural communities of Palestine.  They are of course dominant in eastern Arabia as well.  They also appear (in a much more limited manner) in the southern Hejaz (far from any Persian influence).


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## MarcB

Goldbugs take a look here:http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1285940


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## GoldBug

Thanks again for the many explanations.  I see this is an old argument which has been dealt with before so no sense going into all this again.

_*However, and I hope panel members here will excuse me,  whenever in the future someone asks me where Arabic "ch" comes from, I will tell them from Persian.  Why?  Because it's the easiest explanation even though it's incorrect. *_

It's also "believable".  After all, Iran is closer to Arabia than India is, Persian is a "living" language in Bahrain, some Gulf dialects are peppered with Persian terms and there are "other" historical, religious and commercial ties between the  Gulf and Iran and there have been since pre-Islamic times.  Plus, no Arabic dialect East of the Red Sea uses /ch/.  What other "proof" is needed?


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## clevermizo

So you are of the opinion that people should be given misinformation whenever it is easier to explain? That's interesting.
[...] As to the pronunciation تشاي this is because [tʃ] ('ch') derives from the original word, going back ultimately to the original Chinese, and has nothing to do with the existence of this sound elsewhere in Gulf Arabic, regardless of this sound's origin, as Wadi has noted above. The existence of [tʃ] in Gulf Arabic probably helped maintain the original form of the word, rather than it becoming simplified to شاي as in other dialects and as in standard Arabic.


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## WadiH

GoldBug, I respect your opinion and have no intention of trying to change your mind. But this forum comes up on Google a lot and so I think your points need to be answered for future readers.



GoldBug said:


> _*However, and I hope panel members here will excuse me, whenever in the future someone asks me where Arabic "ch" comes from, I will tell them from Persian. Why? Because it's the easiest explanation even though it's incorrect. *_



It's not an easy explanation at all, actually, and opens more questions than it answers. For one thing, you need to show a mechanism or chain by which a word such as "kalb" becomes "chalb" through the influence of Persian. Can you do that? Does Persian also convert [k] to [ch]? If not, then how would Persian export a feature that it doesn't itself how? And what about the conversion of [g] to [dj]? Where did that come from? From Persian also? Also, what other examples do you have of a phoneme being imported into a language in this manner? Why didn't they import the [v] sound for example or the [p]? You could perhaps understand Persian phonemes being retained in communities that descend largely or entirely from Persians, but there are no such communities in the Gulf region, and the [ch] sound occurs deep in the desert among Arabian tribes with very conservative dialects and barely any contact with Persians. 

Maps are misleading. If you ignored the map for a second, you'll find that it's a much easier and logical explanation to view [k]>[ch] as part of the same phenomenon as [g]>[dj], [k]>[ts] and [g]>[dz] in Arabian-type dialects, and part of the same process that happens independently in many languages, including English (e.g. "go" v, "legend"). 



> It's also "believable". After all, Iran is closer to Arabia than India is,



No one's saying that the [ch] sound in Gulf Arabic came from India. India is only relevant to the word "Chai."



> Persian is a "living" language in Bahrain, some Gulf dialects are peppered with Persian terms



Yes, Gulf Arabic has a few Persian loandwords, which is normal. There are even more loanwords from English and Hindi and a few from Turkish as well (unlike the Persians, the Turks ruled eastern Arabia for almost 400 years and yet their influence on the dialect is also very minimal apart from a few loanwords). That doesn't mean that the [ch] sound comes from Persian.

I know that from thousands of miles away you look at the map and this looks like a neat way to explain things, but if you actually study the region closely you'll find that (as I mentioned above) maps can be misleading. In everyday life, the vast majority of people in Arabia had very little contact with Persia or Persians, even on the Gulf coast itself. The few Persian immigrants who setted in some of the small trading posts on the coast (Dubai, Doha and Bahrain) were vastly outnumbered by the locals and quickly assimilated the local dialect (I've had many friends from these immigrant communities; none spoke any kind of Persian). Their immigration was a recent phenomenon anyway. Most came in the 20th century, and very few can trace their origin before the 18th. The contacts were certainly not extensive enough to have to cause people in the desert to drop a perfectly good phoneme like [k] in favour of [ch].



> and there are "other" historical, religious and commercial ties between the Gulf and Iran and there have been since pre-Islamic times. Plus, no Arabic dialect East of the Red Sea uses /ch/. What other "proof" is needed?



Whatever your thoery may be called, it cannot be called any kind of proof. Proof is anyway very rare. What we're looking for is evidence.

Your "Red Sea" argument misses the larger picture. All Arabian-type dialects (with the exception of the urban dialects of the Hejaz) use affrication/platalization to distinguish feminine from masculine. It is an Arabian Peninsular feature that has radiated into Palestine, Syria and Iraq but only among the tribal communities there (the urban dialects remained completely untouched by it -- this is more evidence that it has nothing to do with Persian, by the way). That is why it is not found in North Africa, not because of any Persian influence. Again, how could Persian cause a phenomenon in Arabic that Persian itself does not have?!

As for the [ch]/[dj] phenomenon specifically (as opposed [ts]/[dz] in Najdi Arabic), that is most likely a feature of the ancient dialect of Bani Tamim, as the current distribution of the feature matches the territories of that tribe (i.e. eastern Arabia and the Iraqi desert, including Kuwait). That is why the town of Hotat Bani Tamim, in the middle of Najd, uses [k]>[ch] even though all the surrounding area uses [k]>[ts], as it was established as a Bani Tamim colony many centuries ago. If you look at the Classical works on the subject, you'll find that Tamim are described as a "kashkasha" tribe, while the neighboring "Bakr" were a "kaskasa" tribe. Lo and behold: the territories of Bakr are still kaskasa areas today. Another Tamimi trait is the conversion of [dj] to [y] in Gulf Arabic, which is also a feature of the dialect of Hotat Bani Tamim in Najd.

(For the grouping of Arabian dialects (past and present) and how boundaries between dialect groups still largely match those described by the Classical grammarians, I would recommend the opening chapters of Prochaska's _Saudi Dialects_.)


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## thelastchoice

The Sound CH in Arabic is not a Persian or Farsi influence at all. Its usage in Arabian Peninsula is probably older than Persian language itself!!
This sound is still used by Arabian Tribes in Hijaz mountainous regions where no Persian has ever reached there!!!


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## Phosphorus

Well it is previously said that "tshay" is used in the Gulf region, while Hijaz lies in the shores of the Red Sea. So that "ch" being used in Hijaz cannot rule out any assumption regarding the influence of Persian proper in case of Gulf regional Arabic, a significant number of its speakers even holding Iranian passports, containing "tshay" instead of "shay". However it could be due to a recent trend and not of foreign influence. Because I have noticed in many subtitled movies that for original "ch" in non-Arabic names they use "tsh" (e.g. "tsharlz" for "Charles"). And after all Arabic "shay" and Persian "chay"/"chaee" are borrowed from, if I am not mistaken, either a Turkic speech or Mongolian (it, "chai", evidently shares the same root with "tea" and both are local Chinese variant-to my knowledge).

P.S. Maybe this part of the post is better to be stated somewhere else, but I today I heard from several native Arabic speakers that many original Arabs can pronounce "ch" or "g". So I wonder what ever for then the Arabic alphabet lacks letters for these very consonants?!


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## behbahan

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Yes, Gulf Arabic has a few Persian loandwords, which is normal. There are even more loanwords from English and Hindi and a few from Turkish as well (unlike the Persians, the Turks ruled eastern Arabia for almost 400 years and yet their influence on the dialect is also very minimal apart from a few loanwords). That doesn't mean that the [ch] sound comes from Persian.


 The Persian language has had the most pervasive foreign linguistic influence on the Bahraini dialects: http://books.google.com/books?id=bJLjAKH7-rIC&pg=PR30&dq 

Pages XXX - XXXII

Hardly a ''few Persian loanwords''. The Persian language has also had a significant influence on the sedentary dialects of Kuwait and Dubai (not sure about the other Emirates of UAE).



> In everyday life, the vast majority of people in Arabia had very little contact with Persia or Persians, even on the Gulf coast itself.


 Persian immigration into Bahrain has been constant for centuries. *Pre-​Islamic *Eastern Arabia had a significant Persian-speaking community. There has always been a flow of Persian-speaking Shias into Bahrain.




> The few Persian immigrants who setted in some of the small trading posts on the coast (Dubai, Doha and *Bahrain*) were vastly outnumbered by the locals and quickly assimilated the local dialect (I've had many friends from these immigrant communities; none spoke any kind of Persian).


 There is a Persian community in Bahrain known as ''Ajam'' (Shia Bahrainis of non-Arab Iranian descent). The vast majority of Bahraini Ajam speak Persian (aka ''3jmi''), this is common knowledge in Bahrain. 

There's a lack of social integration between the Baharna (indigenous Shia Arabs) and the Ajam. Intermarriages between Baharna and Ajam are rare. Intermarriages between Ajam and Sunni Bahrainis are also rare. There are also Sunni Bahrainis of Persian (Laristani) and Kurdish ancestry. I don't know if most still speak their native languages, maybe @Aisha93 knows.



> Their immigration was a recent phenomenon anyway. Most came in the 20th century, and very few can trace their origin before the 18th. The contacts were certainly not extensive enough to have to cause people in the desert to drop a perfectly good phoneme like [k] in favour of [ch].


 We're not talking about people in the desert. The Gulf area has had a long, documented history of continuous cross-Gulf migrations between Arab and Persian societies since ancient times.


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## suma

The Persian influence is mentioned mostly because it's assumed that anything origination from the east like India or China would likely pass thru Persia before getting disseminated to Arabia.
So the Arabs got chai > Persia> India > China


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## fdb

Allow me to quote this from Wadi Hanifa’s contribution to the older thread: 

“*K=ch*: I don't know if there's a word for this, but as you know you find this among the sedentary poulations of the the Gulf littoral (from northern Oman to Kuwait and including Al-Hasa in KSA), and you find it in most (all?) of Iraq, and among the Arabs of Ahwaz in Iran. You also find it in rural Palestine, and among some of the bedouin tribes of Jordan, Iraq, and Palestine (the ones that have been in those areas for a long time, rather than the more recent immigrants from Najd and Hejaz). As you probably know, it's not restricted to pronouns, and its use is much more extensive than that of "k=ts" in Najd.”

This palatalisation of k > č has to be kept separate from the development of k > š (notably in the Yemen) and of k > ts in the Hijaz, as Wadi Hanifa quite rightly stresses. The k > č palatalisation is typical of the Gulf region and Iraq, but occurs also sporadically in some Bedouin and Bedouin-type dialects further West. It does not occur in standard (classical) Persian, which is based mainly on the dialects of Khurasan, but it is very common in the dialects of South Western Iran. For example, the word kār “work” is pronounced čār in places like Shiraz. I think therefore that it is reasonable to suggest that the k > č shift is an areal feature of Arabic and Persian dialects of the Gulf region. In the light of the long historical interaction between Arabs and Persians in the Gulf region and Mesopotamia it could easily be imagined to have started off in either one of the two languages.


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## behbahan

Wadi Hanifa said:


> You could perhaps understand Persian phonemes being retained in *communities that descend largely or entirely from Persians, but there are no such communities in the Gulf region*


In what universe?

Bahrain, Kuwait, Dubai and northern Oman have always had Persian communities. Shia Kuwaitis are mainly Ajam. The majority of Emirati locals in Dubai are of Persian origin. In Sharjah and Abu Dhabi, some Emiratis are Huwala (definition). 

Dubai's Iranian community mostly originate from the Fars Province (mainly Laristan and Khonj). The majority of Persians in the mountainous region of Laristan are Sunnis, not Shias. The people of Laristan speak ''Lari'' which is most similar to Luri and pre-Islamic Persian. UAE's local Shia minority are also mainly ''Ajam''. Most Emirati citizens of Iranian descent have Persian ancestry, not Huwala. Source: Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper 


> Since the beginning of the last century, Iranian immigration into the gulf came in a steady influx and many of the area’s citizens are of Iranian descent. Despite the fact that most of Iranian immigration to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states mainly involves Huwala [descendants of Sunni Arabs who originally migrated from the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf to Iran (Persia) and returned to the Arabian peninsula in the eighteenth century], the Iranian presence in the UAE differs from that in the GCC states as most of the Iranians have Persian roots.



Persians have resided in northern Oman for centuries. The Persian presence in Oman is evident by the names of various quarters in Muscat and Matrah. In the Musandam Peninsula, a Luri dialect known as Kumzari is spoken.


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## k8an

fdb said:


> For example, the word kār “work” is pronounced čār in places like Shiraz.


WHAT!? Seriously? Mind = blown. I have never heard such a thing...ever!

Regarding the Arabic "ch" - I have always wondered this myself. I find the Persian influence theory plausible but not very likely.


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## fdb

k8an said:


> WHAT!? Seriously? Mind = blown. I have never heard such a thing...ever!



For example:
 kilīd > čelid  
kaf > čaf

http://de.forvo.com/word/%DA%A9%D9%84%DB%8C%D8%AF%D9%87%D8%A7%DB%8C_%D9%85%DB%8C%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%A8%D8%B1/

[url]http://de.forvo.com/word/%DA%A9%D9%81_%D9%BE%D8%A7/
[/URL]


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## k8an

Again, my mind is blown. I find it Impossible to believe as I've never heard such a thing from Shirazis, a Persian speaker from anywhere in Iran or even Afghanistan. How bizarre.

Anyway, back to the Arabic.

I think there is something to be said for the feminine "ch" suffix. Perhaps it started with this and spread?

I also wonder whether, seeing as k/ch is so prominent in Iraq, it is an adopted feature from an Aramaic dialect which spread from Iraq to the gulf? I know that in the dialects of Aramaic I am familiar with, "ch" does not exist, which makes me doubtful of any link. However, I suppose there could possibly be dialects which do use "ch"...anybody?


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## vinyljunkie619

All the dialect of the Gulf use CH as well: Omani, Eastern Saudi, Ba7rani, Gitari, Kweeti, all the dialects of the UAE.  With the exception of the 2nd person singular (-ich), all ch/k are interchangeable.


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## k8an

I know. I'm wondering whether it started in Iraq though and spread to the gulf.


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## fdb

k8an said:


> I'm wondering whether it started in Iraq though and spread to the gulf.



I think exactly the opposite is true. The k >  č shift is a Gulf Arabic feature shared by the bedouinised “gelet” dialects in Southern Iraq. It is conspicuously absent in the archaic “qeltu” dialects.


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## WadiH

behbahan said:


> We're not talking about people in the desert. The Gulf area has had a long, documented history of continuous cross-Gulf migrations between Arab and Persian societies since ancient times.



Yes we are because there are countless dialects deep in the desert that affricate k to ch and g to dj.  The fact that there are people who speak Persian in Bahrain and Musandam is irrelevant because we're discussing Arabic not Persian.  All the other points you've raised are addressed in my posts above if you read them carefully.  Nobody disputes that there are many people with Persian ancestry in the Gulf, but when they speak Arabic they speak in the local dialect.  Some may have a Persian accent (pronunciation of the 'r' is a common shibboleth in Kuwait for example that distinguishes those of Arabian vs Persian descent), but that is further proof that the local dialect retains its identity.  There are many people of Arab descent in America and some still have Arabic accents when they speak American English but that doesn't affect the phonology of other Americans.  (By the way many if not most Kuwaiti Shias are of Hasawi origin.)


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## behbahan

Wadi Hanifa said:


> By the way many if not most Kuwaiti Shias are of Hasawi origin.


The majority of Kuwaiti Shias are of Iranian origin, only 15% of Kuwaiti Shias are of Hasawi origin.


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## WadiH

Interesting. Thanks for this.


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## DarrenLamb

vinyljunkie619 said:


> All the dialect of the Gulf use CH as well: Omani, Eastern Saudi, Ba7rani, Gitari, Kweeti, all the dialects of the UAE.  With the exception of the 2nd person singular (-ich), all ch/k are interchangeable.



Actually most Omanis use "sh", like Yemenis. Supposedly the use of "sh" for the 2nd person feminine singular dates back to ancient times. How true this is I don't know but it's a theory I have heard.


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## WadiH

It's attested in Classical sources so it's definitely true.


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## DarrenLamb

Ah I see, interesting stuff.


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## clevermizo

So sort of a middle of the road view: the most parsimonious explanation for k>ch is that of a naturally occurring phonological lenition series would be likely to occur spontaneously as it has in independent systems everywhere in the world. However one might hypothesize that, at least for some speech communities, the accessibility and use of Persian or Persian phonemes in loanwords might reinforce retention of this phoneme. But also let's consider that if the phoneme had not natively existed in the Arabic communities using Persian or Persian loanwords, it might have been expected to be "nativized" as [sh] instead when found in loans.


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## WadiH

The shift of k > ch is nothing more than the unvoiced counterpart of the shift from g > dj.  It's really as simple as that.  There is absolutely no reason to believe that it has anything to do with any Persian influence even by way of "reinforcement".  Affrication in general whether to ch or ts is known among the people of Arabia to be a conservative, tribal feature, not a marker of Persian influence.  It is also attested in tribal poetry, place names and family names before the arrival of the vast majority of the Persian immigrants, most of whom arrived from the 18th century onwards and settled in only a limited number of locations in the Gulf.  The underlying assumption that this is solely a Gulf or Mesopotamian feature is also false as I've shown repeatedly.


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## aisha93

Hello, 

I find this thread interesting and would like to share my little knowledge about the things being discussed



> For one thing, you need to show a mechanism or chain by which a word  such as "kalb" becomes "chalb" through the influence of Persian. Can you  do that? Does Persian also convert [k] to [ch]? If not, then how would  Persian export a feature that it doesn't itself how?



I totally agree with you (Wadi Hanifa). But do you know since when is this phenomenon of (k > ch) in use? In Gulf Arabic of course not Persian, because in Persian no such phenomenon exists.



> It does not occur in standard (classical) Persian, which is based mainly  on the dialects of Khurasan, but it is very common in the dialects of  South Western Iran. For example, the word kār “work” is pronounced čār  in places like Shiraz.



This is the first time I'm hearing this 
I have been to Iran twice, though this was 6-7 years ago and I didn't know much Persian at that time, even my Larestani Dialect wasn't that good and mixed with Arabic. I learnt it later when I lived with my Grandmother who didn't knew Arabic at all.
I remember we stayed in Shiraz for a couple of days but I never heard anyone replace (k) by (ch). Maybe this is only limited to one dialect of Shiraz? Because there are more than one dialects in Shiraz.
I also haven't noticed this in any other southern dialect I know.
So the influence of Persian in this regard is very unlikely.



> There are also Sunni Bahrainis of Persian (Laristani)





> Dubai's Iranian community mostly originate from the Fars Province (mainly Laristan and Khonj). The majority of Persians in the mountainous region of Laristan are Sunnis, not Shias.



The strange thing is that in Bahrain we are known as (Howla هولة/حولة) and in UAE as (3eyam عيم). I have many close relatives in Ajman who are referred to there as عيم but here we are called هولة!
Ajman is full of Sunni Persians who come from Iranian villages (now cities) such as: Bastak, Evaz, Jenah, Khonj, Pishvar, Parsian, Lamezan, Bandar Lenga  and also Qeshm (جزیره قشم)

Many reasons are stated as to why people in these cities didn't change from Sunni to Shia by the time of Safavid as most people in Iran did. Most important of which are because these cities are almost in the southernmost so they were hard to reach, also they are located in mountainous regions (as behbehan said above) and suffer a lot from natural disasters such as earthquakes, diseases and droughts. 

This is why many people of these regions migrated to neighboring Arab countries especially after اكتشاف النفط. They work here and send the money to Iran to build schools and mosques and dig wells or what is known locally as Berka (See a picture)

Some people say that Ajman is known by this name because of the large number of Ajams or Persians there, wikipedia also mentions this:

يقول كتاب دولة الإمارات العربية المتحدة (ان سب تسميتها (عجمان) يعود  لوجود قبيلة بهذا الاسم فيها). ويقصد الكتاب قبيلة العجمان العربية  الكريمة، واحدهم عجماني. وهذا رأي من الآراء المسموعة. *إلا أن هناك آراء  أخرى منها: إن سبب التسمية يعود إلى تواجد العجم أي الفرس بكثرة في  الامارة، وكان ذلك ايام الحروب العربية الفارسية في المنطقة*.

There is a neighborhood there referred to as فريج العيم .. I don't know if (neighborhood) is the right translation for فريج though


I've once read that most of these small cities (along with other cities in Fars and Hormozgan) predate Islam and they remained as Majus/Zoroastrians for around four centuries after Islam and were the latest to convert. Also the language spoken in these places has many features and words from Middle Persian/Pahlavi and is less influenced by Arabic and Turkish.



> and Kurdish ancestry.



There are no Kurds in Bahrain as far as I know


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## behbahan

aisha93 said:


> The strange thing is that in Bahrain we are known as (Howla هولة/حولة) and in UAE as (3eyam عيم). I have many close relatives in Ajman who are referred to there as عيم but here we are called هولة![...]


That's very interesting, thank you for this 

Most Emiratis in the emirates of Dubai, Ajman, Ras al-Khaimah and Umm Al-Quwain are of Persian origin.

UAE probably has more Ajam than Bahrain and Kuwait.


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