1 Habib Borjian (2021) Traces of Pharyngeal Consonants in Isfahani Persian: A Case of Language Contact, Iranian Studies, 54:1-2, 281-295, DOI: 10.1080/00210862.2019.1682933. First published online in 2019. Habib Borjian  Traces of pharyngeal consonants in Isfahani Persian: A Case of Language Contact Abstract The word-final /-a/ and the diphthong /ay/ of earlier New Persian shift respectively to /-e/ and /ey/ in modern Persian. Isfahani Persian follows suit, e.g., dande “rib” and meydun “plaza.” However, the earlier phonemes survive only in a finite set of words: Arabic loanwords in which the /a/ succeeds pharyngeal consonants, e.g., ǰomʾa (< ǰumʿa) “Friday,” fâtaː (< fātiḥa) “funeral,” ayd (< ʿayd) “feast.” Isfahani Persian shows other vocalic anomalies adjacent to original pharyngeals, including syllable-final iʿ > aː in qânaː (< qāniʿ) “content,” maːmâr (< miʿmār) “architect.” This article investigates these phonological irregularities and their geographic distribution and historical periodization. Keywords: Pharyngeal consonants, vowel coloration, sound shift, language contact, Persian varieties, Median, Arabs in Isfahan, Jews of Isfahan Introduction: Pharyngeals in Iranian Languages No known Iranian language, extinct or living, is known to have inherited the laryngeals that existed in proto-Indo-European 1 . The Persian lexicon, in addition to the native stock, is crammed with Arabic loanwords, but has assimilated alien sounds to the closest native phonemes; this includes the pharyngeal stop ʿ [ʕ] and fricative ḥ [ħ] which are realized as /ʾ/ [ʔ] and /h/ respectively. 2 Arabic loanwords in other Iranian languages normally carry the Persian form. There are nevertheless Iranian languages, varieties of Persian included, that carry the pharyngeal consonants [ʕ] and [ħ], often as marginal phonemes, sometimes in free variation with glottal [ʔ] and [h], in Arabic loanwords as well as in some  Habib Borjian is an Associate Research Scholar at the Ehsan Yarshater Center for Iranian Studies, Columbia University. This study was presented at the Eighth International Conference of Iranian Linguistics (ICIL-8), Yerevan, 11–13 October 2018. The author would like to thank Daniel Anthony Barry for his comments on the manuscript of this paper. 1 Schmitt 1989. 2 See Sadeghi 1975. On glottal [ʔ], see Jahani 2005. On uvular [q], see Sadeghi 2006.