Kalasha Language

Assignment # 1

 Rida Wasim


KALASHA - AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE

Kalasha is classified as an Indo-European  and Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Hindukush mountains of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. The Kalasha speech community has a unique culture and a rich tradition of oral literature.

Kalasha (also known as kalashamon) has been classified as belonging to the Chitral sub-branch (along with Khowar) of Dardic languages which are spoken in the North Western zone of Indo-Aryan languages. The number of speakers documented are from 2,500 -5000.

Main Features:

The Kalasha language has a large inventory of about 62 phonemes: half of them are nasal, nearly one quarter of the consonants are retroflex and nearly one-third of them are aspirated. The standard order of grammatical constituents for a statement is S-O-V.

Dialects:

The Kalasha language is spoken primarily in three valleys of Chitral district: Bumboret, Rumbur and Birir. There is some minor dialect variation between these valleys and between certain villages within them. If one language were to emerge as the overall standard it would be that spoken in the Bumboret Valley because it is the most populous and developed of the Kalasha Valleys.

Research and Documentation:

The  first  published  work  on  the  Kalasha  language  is  Leitner’s  pioneering  sketch  1880,  summarized  by  Grierson  (1919)  in  which  Kalasha  is  presented  in  a  ‘Kafir  Group’  of  a  Dardic  sub‐family  of  the  Aryan  languages.  Another  pioneering  sketch  of  the  sound  system  and  grammar  of  Kalasha  is  Morgenstierne  (1932),  based  on  data  collection  directly  from  the  Kalasha  people  during  his  field  work  which  started  in  1929  and  lasted  a  lifetime.  Morgenstierne’s  1932  sketchy  work  is  thoroughly  described  and  completed  in  his  1973  Volume,  “Notes  on  Kalasha”.  Since  then,  this  has  been  the  starting  point  for  subsequent  linguistic  work  on  Kalasha,  which  still  remains  fragmentary:  Elena  Bashir’s  1988  PhD  thesis  “Topics  in  Kalasha  syntax”  and  Jan  Heegård  Petersen’s  2006  unpublished  PhD  thesis  “Local  case‐marking  in  Kalasha”.  In  parallel  line,  we  have  the  publication  of  Sir  Ralph  Turner’s  1966  “A  Comparative  Dictionary  of  the  Indo‐Aryan  Languages”.  Thirty  years  later  we  have  the  publication  of  a  Kalasha‐English  dictionary  compiled  by  Ron  Trail  and  Greg  Cooper,  in  1999.  Now,  all  the  entries  in  this  dictionary  are  compiled  according  to  the  following  alphabetical  order:  

a,  ã  ,  ạ  ,  ạ̃  ,  b,  č,  č̣  ,  d,  dz,  e,  ẽ,  ẹ  ,  ẹ̃  ,  g,  h,  i,  ĩ,  ị  ,  ị̣̣̣̣̃,  ĵ,  ĵ̣,  k,  l,  ḷ,  m,  n,  ŋ,  o,  õ,  ọ,  ọ̃,  p,  r,  s,  š,  ṣ,  t,  ts,  ṭ,   u,  ũ,  ụ,  ụ̃,  w,  y,  z,  ž,  ẓ  .