Pashayi languages

Pashayi
Native to Afghanistan
Ethnicity Pashayi people
Native speakers
 400,000 (2000–2011)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 Variously:
aee – Northeastern
glh – Northwestern
psi – Southeastern
psh – Southwestern
Glottolog pash1270[2]
Linguasphere 59-AAA-a

Pashayi or Pashai is a group of languages spoken by the Pashai people in parts of Kapisa, Laghman, Nuristan, Kunar, and Nangarhar Provinces in Northeastern Afghanistan. It belongs to the Dardic branch of the Indo-Aryan languages.[3] Most speakers are bilingual in Pashto with a literacy rate of about 25%, with the Pashayi languages having no written form prior to 2003.[4] There are four mutually unintelligible varieties, with only about a 30% lexical similarity:[1]

  • Northeastern: Aret, Chalas (Chilas), Kandak, Korangal, Kurdar dialects
  • Northwestern: Alasai, Bolaghain, Gulbahar, Kohnadeh, Laurowan, Najil, Nangarach, Pachagan, Pandau, Parazhghan, Pashagar, Sanjan, Shamakot, Shutul, Uzbin, Wadau dialects
  • Southeastern: Damench, Laghmani, Sum, and Upper and Lower Darai Nur dialects
  • Southwestern: Ishpi, Isken, Tagau dialects

A grammar of the language was written as a doctoral dissertation in 2014.[5]

References

  1. 1 2 Northeastern at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Northwestern at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Southeastern at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Southwestern at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Pashayi". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ Masica, Colin P. (1991). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 440.
  4. ↑ Yun, Ju-Hong (2003). "Pashai Language Development Project: Promoting Pashai language, literacy and community development" (PDF).
  5. ↑ Lehr, Rachel. 2014. A descriptive grammar of Pashai: The language and speech of a community of Darrai Nur. Phd dissertation, University of Chicago.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.