Kalasha language

Kalasha
Kalashamondr
Native to Pakistan (Chitral District)
Region Bumburet, Rumbur and Birir, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Ethnicity Kalash
Native speakers
 5,000 (2000)[1]
Arabic script (by convention), Latin script (Western countries, USA)
Language codes
ISO 639-3 kls
Glottolog kala1372[2]
Linguasphere 59-AAB-ab

Kalasha (also known as Kalashamondr) is an Indo-European language in the Indo-Aryan branch spoken by the Kalash people, further classified as a Dardic language in the Chitral group.[3] The Kalasha language is phonologically atypical because it contrasts plain, long, nasal, and retroflex vowels as well as combinations of these (Heegård & Mørch 2004).

Kalasha is spoken by the Kalash people who reside in the remote valleys of Bumburet, Birir and Rumbur, which are west of Ayun, which is ten miles down the river from Chitral Town, high in the Hindu Kush mountains in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. The Kalash have their own religion, with gods and goddesses. There are an estimated 5,000 speakers of Kalasha.[4]

According to Badshah Munir Bukhari, one of the world's leading authorities on this subject, "Kalasha" is also the ethnic name for the Nuristani inhabitants of a region southwest of the Kalasha Valleys, in the Waygal and middle Pech Valleys of Afghanistan's Nuristan Province. The term "Kalasha" seems to have been adopted by the Kalasha speakers of Chitral from the Nuristanis of Waygal, who for a time expanded up to southern Chitral several centuries ago.[5] However, there is no close connection between the Indo-Aryan language Kalasha-mun and the Nuristani language Kalasha-ala, which descend from different branches of the Indo-Iranian languages.

Until the late 20th century, Kalasha was an undocumented language. More recently, through the work of a Greek NGO and local Kalasha elders seeking to preserve their oral traditions, a new Kalasha alphabet has been created. Working in close collaboration with various international researchers and linguists, Kalasha linguist Taj Khan Kalash organized first "Kalasha Orthography Conference"[6] in Islamabad Pakistan. Having moved to Thessaloniki, Greece, to study linguistics in the Aristotle University, he and the Greek NGO Mesogaia took on the task of compiling the script and creating The Alphabet Book, a primer used to teach the alphabet to the Kalasha children. In 2004 he was able to raise funds to publish the first alphabet book of the Kalasha language based on Roman script designed by an Australian linguist, Gregory R. Cooper.

Of all the languages in the subcontinent, Kalasha is likely the most conservative, along with the nearby western Dardic language Khowar.[7] In a few cases, Kalasha is even more conservative than Khowar, e.g. in retaining voiced aspirate consonants, which have disappeared from most other Dardic languages.

Some of the typical retentions of sounds and clusters (and meanings) are seen in the following list. However, note some common New Indo-Aryan and Dardic features as well.[8]

Phonology

Below is set out the phonology of the Kalasha Language.[9]

Vowels

Front Central Back
Close i ĩ i˞ ĩ˞ u ũ u˞ ũ˞
Mid e ẽ e˞ ẽ˞ o õ o˞ õ˞
Open a ã a˞ ã˞

Consonants

As with other Dardic languages, the phonemic status of the breathy voiced series is debatable. Some analyses are unsure of whether they are phonemic or simply lexical—i.e., clusters of consonants with /h/.[10]

Labial Alveolar Retroflex Postalveolar Velar Uvular Glottal
Nasal m n (ɳ) (ɲ) (ŋ)
Stop voiceless p t ʈ k (q)
voiced b d ɖ ɡ
aspirated pʰ tʰ ʈʰ kʰ
breathy voiced bʱ dʱ ɖʱ ɡʱ
Affricate voiceless ts tʂ tʃ
voiced dz dʐ dʒ
aspirated tsʰ tʂʰ tʃʰ
breathy voiced dʒʱ
Fricative voiceless s ʂ ʃ (x) h
voiced ʐ ʒ (ɣ)
Approximant l j w
Rhotic r (ɽ)

The phonemes /x ɣ q/ are found in loanwords.

Comparative

The following table compares Kalash words to their cognates in other Indo-Aryan languages.[11]

EnglishKalashaSanskritNew age Hindi
bone athi, aṭhí asthi Hindi -; Nepali ā̃ṭh 'the ribs'
urine mutra, mútra mūtra H. mūt
village grom grama H. gā̃u;Sanskrit gramam
rope rajuk, raĵhú-k rajju H. rassi, lejur
smoke thum dhūma H. dhūā̃, dhuwā̃
meat mos maṃsa H. mā̃s, mās, māsā
dog shua, śõ.'a śvan H. -; Sinhal. suvan
ant pililak, pilílak pipīla, pippīlika H. pipṛā
son put, putr putra H. pūt
long driga, dríga dīrgha H. dīha
eight asht, aṣṭ aṣṭā H. āṭh
broken china, čhína chinna H. chīn-nā 'to snatch';
kill nash nash, naś, naśyati H. nā̆s 'destroy'

Grammar

Examples of conservative features in Kalasha and Khowar are (note, NIA = New Indo-Aryan, MIA = Middle Indo-Aryan, OIA = Old Indo-Aryan):

References

  1. ↑ Kalasha at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Kalasha". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ 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.
  4. ↑ 1998 Census Report of Pakistan. (2001). Population Census Organization, Statistics Division, Government of Pakistan.
  5. ↑ http://users.sedona.net/~strand/Nuristani/Kalasha/kalasha.html, http://nuristan.info/Nuristani/Kalasha/kalasha.html
  6. ↑ Kalasha Orthography Conference 2000
  7. ↑ Georg Morgenstierne. Indo-Iranian Frontier Languages, Vol. IV: The Kalasha Language & Notes on Kalasha. Oslo 1973, p. 184, details pp. 195-237
  8. ↑ Gérard Fussman: 1972 Atlas linguistique des parlers dardes et kafirs. Publications de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient
  9. ↑ Kochetov, Alexei; Arsenault, Paul (2008), Retroflex harmony in Kalasha: Agreement or spreading? (PDF), NELS, 39, Cornell University, p. 4
  10. ↑ Edelman, D. I. (1983). The Dardic and Nuristani Languages. Moscow: (Institut vostokovedenii︠a︡ (Akademii︠a︡ nauk SSSR). p. 202.
  11. ↑ R.T.Trail and G.R. Cooper, Kalasha Dictionary – with English and Urdu. National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Islamabad & Summer Institute of Linguistics, Dallas TX. 1999

Bibliography

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