Gawar-Bati language
| Gawar-Bati | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Pakistan, Afghanistan |
| Region | Chitral, Kunar Province |
Native speakers | 9,500 (1992)[1] |
|
Indo-European
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 |
gwt |
| Glottolog |
gawa1247[2] |
Gawar-Bati is known in Chitral as Aranduyiwar, because it is spoken in Village Arandu, which is the last village in the bottom of Chitral, Pakistan and is also across the Kunar River from Berkot in Afghanistan. Chitral keeps a military base in Arandu to guard the Pak-Afghan international border.
There are 9,000 speakers of Gawar-Bati, but only 1,500 are in Pakistan. The rest are in Afghanistan.
35°19′38″N 71°35′05″E / 35.32722°N 71.58472°E
The Gawar-Bati Language has not been given serious study by linguists, except that it is mentioned by George Morgenstierne (1926) and Kendall Decker (1992). It is classified as a Dardic Language. The Dardic languages have been historically seen as Indo-Iranian, but today they are placed within Indo-Aryan following Morgenstierne's work.[3]
The Norwegian Linguist Georg Morgenstierne wrote that Chitral is the area of the greatest linguistic diversity in the world. Although Khowar is the predominant language of Chitral, more than ten other languages are spoken here. These include Kalasha-mun, Palula, Dameli, Gawar-Bati, Nuristani, Yidgha, Burushaski, Gujar, Wakhi, Kyrgyz, Persian and Pashto. Since many of these languages have no written form, letters are usually written in Urdu or Persian.
Phonology
The following tables set out the phonology of the Gawar-Bati Language.[4]
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i iː | u uː | |
| Mid | (e) eː | (o) oː | |
| Open | a aː |
The status of short /e/ and /o/ is unclear.
Consonants
A breathy voiced series, /bʱ dʱ gʱ/, existed recently in older speakers--and may still do so.
| Labial | Coronal | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɳ | ||||
| Stop | Plain | p | t | ʈ | k | ||
| Aspirated | pʰ [pf f] | tʰ | ʈʰ | kʰ | |||
| Voiced | b | d | ɖ | ɡ | |||
| Affricate | Plain | ts | tʂ | tʃ | |||
| Aspirated | tsʰ | (tʃʰ) | |||||
| Voiced | (dz) | dʒ | |||||
| Fricative | Plain | s | ʂ | ʃ | x | h | |
| Voiced | z | ʒ | ɣ | ||||
| Lateral | Plain | l | |||||
| Fricative | ɬ ~ l̥ | ||||||
| Rhotic | r | ɽ | |||||
| Semivowel | j | w | |||||
References
- ↑ Gawar-Bati at Ethnologue (14th ed., 2000). Note: Undated data may come from an earlier edition.
- ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Gawar-Bati". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- ↑ Bashir, Elena (2007). Jain, Danesh; Cardona, George, eds. The Indo-Aryan languages. p. 905. ISBN 978-0415772945.
'Dardic' is a geographic cover term for those Northwest Indo-Aryan languages which [..] developed new characteristics different from the IA languages of the Indo-Gangetic plain. Although the Dardic and Nuristani (previously 'Kafiri') languages were formerly grouped together, Morgenstierne (1965) has established that the Dardic languages are Indo-Aryan, and that the Nuristani languages constitute a separate subgroup of Indo-Iranian.
- ↑ Edelman, D. I. (1983). The Dardic and Nuristani Languages. Moscow: Institut vostokovedenii︠a︡ (Akademii︠a︡ nauk SSSR). p. 139.
Books
- Decker, Kendall D. (1992) Languages of Chitral ISBN 969-8023-15-1 http://www.ethnologue.com/show_work.asp?id=32850
- Morgenstierne, Georg (1926) Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan. Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, Serie C I-2. Oslo. ISBN 0-923891-09-9
External links
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