Dardic languages

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Dardic
Geographic
distribution:		 Eastern Afghanistan, northern Pakistan (Gilgit Baltistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), northern India (Jammu and Kashmir)
Linguistic classification: Indo-European
Subdivisions:
Glottolog: None
indo1324  (Northwestern Zone)[1]

The Dardic languages (also Dardu or Pisaca[2]) are a sub-group of the Indo-Aryan languages natively spoken in northern Pakistan's Gilgit Baltistan, Azad Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northern India's Jammu and Kashmir, and eastern Afghanistan.[3][4] Kashmiri/Kashur is the most prominent Dardic language, with an established literary tradition and official recognition as one of the official languages of India.[3][5][6]

The separate nature of the Dardic languages from other Indo Iranian language is still clear, however, they form close relationship with other Indo-Aryan languages, especially Punjabi.[7]

Subdivisions

Dardic languages can be organized into the following subfamilies:[8]

In other classifications, Pashai may be included within Kunar, and Kashmiri within Shina. Khetrani may be a remnant Dardic language in the Siraiki region.

Kohistan is a Persian word that means ‘land of mountains’; Kohistani can be translated as ‘mountain people’ or ‘mountain language’ and is popularly used to refer to several distinct languages in the mountain areas of Northern Pakistan, including Maiya, Kalami, and Torwali.

Recording about the Torwals, a non Pashtun tribe which with the Gabaris, occupied both lower and upper Swat prior to the invasion of Swat by the Yusufzai Pashtun in the sixteenth century AD.

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The Pathans call them, and all other Muhammadans of Indian descent in the Hindu Kush valleys, Kohistanis.[9]

Classification

George Abraham Grierson, with scant data, placed the Nuristani languages within the Dardic group, and then Dardic as an independent branch of Indo-Iranian. Many subsequent linguists kept this identification, variously identifying Dardic-Nuristani as Indo-Iranian or Indo-Aryan. Georg Morgenstierne split Dardic and Nuristani into separate families, and placed Nuristani as a third branch of Indo-Iranian and Dardic as Indo-Aryan. This is the scheme generally accepted by recent scholarship.[10]

There is still some dispute regarding the ultimate classification of the Dardic languages. The grouping is acknowledged to be to some extent geographical,[4] and several different relationships between Indo-Aryan, Indo-Iranian, Dardic and Nuristani have been proposed.[11] Buddruss rejected the Dardic grouping entirely, and placed the languages within Central Indo-Aryan.[12]

According to a model by Asko Parpola, the Dardic languages are directly descended from the Rigvedic dialect of Vedic Sanskrit.[13]

Except for Kashmiri, all of the Dardic languages are small minority languages which have not been sufficiently studied. In many cases they are spoken in areas difficult to access due to mountainous terrain and/or armed conflicts in the region. All of the languages (including Kashmiri) have been historically influenced by more prominent (non-Dardic) neighboring languages.

While it is true that many Dardic languages have been influenced by non-Dardic neighbors, Dardic may in turn also have left a discernible imprint on non-Dardic Indo-Aryan languages, such as Punjabi[10] and allegedly even far beyond.[14][15] It has also been asserted that some Pahari languages of Uttarakhand demonstrate Dardic influence.[10][16] Although it has not been conclusively established, some linguists have hypothesized that Dardic may, in ancient times, have enjoyed a much bigger linguistic zone, stretching from the mouth of the Indus (in Sindh) northwards in an arc, and then eastwards through modern day Himachal Pradesh to Kumaon.[17][18][19]

Characteristics of Dardic languages

The languages of the Dardic group share some common defining characteristics, including the loss of aspirated sounds and word ordering that is unique for Indo-Iranian languages.

Loss of voiced aspiration

Virtually all Dardic languages have experienced a partial or complete loss of voiced aspirated consonants.[8][20] Khowar uses the word buum for 'earth' (Sanskrit: bhumi),1 Pashai uses the word duum for 'smoke' (Hindi: dhuan, Sanskrit: dhum) and Kashmiri uses the word dod for 'milk' (Sanskrit: dugdha, Hindi: doodh).[8][20] Tonality has developed in some (but not all) Dardic languages, such as Khowar and Pashai, as a compensation.[20] Punjabi and Western Pahari languages similarly lost aspiration but have virtually all developed tonality to partially compensate (e.g. Punjabi kar for 'house', compare with Hindi ghar).[8]

Dardic metathesis and other changes

Both ancient and modern Dardic languages demonstrate a marked tendency towards metathesis where a "pre- or postconsonantal 'r' is shifted forward to a preceding syllable".[10][21] This was seen in Ashokan rock edicts (erected 269 BCE to 231 BCE) in the Gandhara region, where Dardic dialects were and still are widespread. Examples include a tendency to misspell the Sanskrit words priyadarshi (one of the titles of Emperor Ashoka) as priyadrashi and dharma as dhrama.[21] Modern-day Kalasha uses the word driga 'long' (Sanskrit: dirgha).[21] Palula uses drubalu 'weak' (Sanskrit: durbala) and brhuj 'birch tree' (Sanskrit: bhurja).[21] Kashmiri uses drolid2 'impoverished' (Sanskrit: daridra) and krama 'work' or 'action' (Sanskrit: karma).[21] Western Pahari languages (such as Dogri), Sindhi and Lahnda (Western Punjabi) also share this Dardic tendency to metathesis, though they are considered non-Dardic, for example cf. the Punjabi word drakhat 'tree' (from Persian darakht).[10][22]

Dardic languages also show other consonantal changes. Kashmiri, for instance, has a marked tendency to shift k to ch and j to z (e.g. zan 'person' is cognate to Sanskrit jan 'person or living being' and Persian jān 'life').[10] Punjabi and Western Pahari share this tendency also, though they are non-Dardic (e.g. compare Hindi dekho 'look' to Punjabi vekho and Kashmiri vuchiv).[10][clarification needed]

Verb position in Dardic

Unlike most other Indo-Aryan (or Iranian) languages, several Dardic languages present "verb second" as the normal grammatical form. This is similar to many Germanic languages, such as German and Dutch, as well as Uto-Aztecan O'odham and Northeast Caucasian Ingush. Most Dardic languages, however, follow the usual Indo-Aryan SOV pattern.[23]

Language
English (Germanic) This is a horse. We will go to Tokyo.
Kashmiri (Dardic) Yi chhu akh gur. As gachhav Tokyo.
Dari Persian (Iranian) In yak hasb ast. Maa ba Tokyo khaahem raft.
Pashto (Iranian) Masculine: Dā yo ās day / Feminine: Dā yawa aspa da. Mūng/Mūnẓ̌ ba Ṭokyo ta/tar lāṛshū.
Sanskrit (Indo-Aryan) Eṣah eka aśvah asti.3 Vayaṃ Tokyo gacchāmaḥ.
Hindi-Urdu (Indo-Aryan) Ye ek ghora hai.4 Ham Tokyo jāenge.
Punjabi (Indo-Aryan) Ae ikk kora ai. Assi Tokyo jāvange.

See also

Notes

1.^ The Khowar word for 'earth' is more accurately represented, with tonality, as buúm rather than buum, where ú indicates a rising tone.
2.^ The word drolid actually includes a Kashmiri half-vowel, which is difficult to render in the Urdu, Devnagri and Roman scripts alike. Sometimes, an umlaut is used when it occurs in conjunction with a vowel, so the word might be more accurately rendered as drölid.
3.^ Sandhi rules in Sanskrit allow the combination of multiple neighboring words together into a single word: for instance, word-final 'ah' plus word-initial 'a' merge into 'o'. In actual Sanskrit literature, with the effects of sandhi, this sentence would be expected to appear as Eṣa ekośvosti. Also, word-final 'a' is Sanskrit is a schwa, [ə] (similar to the ending 'e' in the German name, Nietzsche), so e.g. the first word is pronounced [eːʂə].
4.^ Hindi-Urdu, and other non-Dardic Indo-Aryan languages, also sometimes utilize a "verb second" order (similar to Kashmiri and English) for dramatic effect.[24] Yeh ek ghoṛā hai is the normal conversational form in Hindi-Urdu. Yeh hai ek ghoṛā is also grammatically correct but indicates a dramatic revelation or other surprise. This dramatic form is often used in news headlines in Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi and other Indo-Aryan languages.

Sources

  • Morgenstierne, G. Irano-Dardica. Wiesbaden 1973;
  • Morgenstierne, G. Die Stellung der Kafirsprachen. In Irano-Dardica, 327-343. Wiesbaden, Reichert 1975
  • Decker, Kendall D. Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan, Volume 5. Languages of Chitral.
  • The Comparative study of Urdu and Khowar. Badshah Munir Bukhari National Language Authority Pakistan 2003.
  • National Institute of Pakistani Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University & Summer Institute of Linguistics [1]

References

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ http://www.britannica.com/topic/Dardic-languages
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/dardestan-
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Denzil Ibbetson, Edward MacLagan, H.A. Rose "A Glossary of The Tribes & Casts of The Punjab & North-West Frontier Province", 1911 AD, Page 472, Vol II1,
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Parpola, Asko (1999), "The formation of the Aryan branch of Indo-European", in Blench, Roger & Spriggs, Matthew, Archaeology and Language, vol. III: Artefacts, languages and texts, London and New York: Routledge.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 21.4 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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