Gawar Bati- An Endangered language of Pakistan

Assignment submitted to Sir. Akhter Aziz

Submitted by Maham Said

Course title: Language Description and Preservation

 

Gawar Bati- An Endangered language of Pakistan

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. Other alternate names for the language are, GOWAR-BATI, GOWARI, ARANDUI, SATRE, NARSATI, NARISATI.

There are 9,000 speakers of Gawar-Bati, but only 1,500 are in Pakistan. The rest are in Afghanistan.

The language has not been extensively studied 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.

The Norwegian Linguist George 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.

It is estimated that Gawar-Bati has 47% lexical similarity with Shumashti. Related to Grangali, Zemiaki, and Nangalami. Some bilingualism in Pashto. Literacy rate in first language: Below 1%. Literacy rate in second language: 5% to 15% (ethnologue, 2000)

 

 

Vowel sounds in Gawar-Bati

	Front	Central	Back
Close	I i:		u u:
Mid	e e:		(o) o:
Open		a a:

 

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