Kashmiri language

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Kashmiri
कॉशुर Koshur كأشُر
Koshur.png
Pronunciation [kəːʃur]
Native to Jammu and Kashmir (India)[1]
Region Kashmir valley
Native speakers
 5.6 million (2001 census)[2]
Dialects
Kashtawari (standard)
Poguli
Rambani
Perso-Arabic script (contemporary),[3]
Devanagari script (contemporary),[3]
Sharada script (ancient/liturgical)[3]
Official status
Official language in
  India[4]
Language codes
ISO 639-1 ks
ISO 639-2 kas
ISO 639-3 kas
Glottolog kash1277[5]
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Kashmiri (/kæʃˈmɪəri/)[6] (कॉशुर, کأشُر), or Koshur, is a language from the Dardic subgroup[7] of the Indo-Aryan languages and it is spoken primarily in the Kashmir Valley and Chenab regions of Jammu and Kashmir.[8][9][10]

There are approximately 5,527,698 speakers throughout India, according to the Census of 2001.[11] Most of the 105,000 speakers in Pakistan are emigrants from the Kashmir Valley after the partition of India.[1][12] They include a few speakers residing in border villages in Neelam District.

Kashmiri is close to other dardic languages spoken in Gilgit, Pakistan and in northern regions of Kargil, India. Outside the Dardic group, tonal aspects and loanwords of Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit, especially its northern dialects.[13][14]

The Kashmiri language is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India,[15] and is a part of the eighth Schedule in the constitution of the Jammu and Kashmir. Along with other regional languages mentioned in the Sixth Schedule, as well as Hindi and Urdu, the Kashmiri language is to be developed in the state.[16] Most Kashmiri speakers use Urdu or English as a second language.[1] Since November 2008, the Kashmiri language has been made a compulsory subject in all schools in the Valley up to the secondary level.[17]

Literature

In 1919 George Abraham Grierson wrote that “Kashmiri is the only one of the Dardic languages that has a literature”. Kashmiri literature dates back to over 750 years, this is, more-or-less, the age of many a modern literature including modern English.[citation needed]

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See also: Kashmiri literature § Kashmiri_language_literature

Writing system

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There are three orthographical systems used to write the Kashmiri language: the Sharada script, the Devanagari script and the Perso-Arabic script. The Roman script is also sometimes informally used to write Kashmiri, especially online.[3]

The Kashmiri language is traditionally written in the Sharada script after the 8th Century A.D.[18] This script however, is not in common use today, except for religious ceremonies of the Kashmiri Pandits.[19]

Today it is written in Perso-Arabic and Devanagari scripts (with some modifications).[20] Among languages written in the Perso-Arabic script, Kashmiri is one of the very few which regularly indicates all vowel sounds.[21] The Kashmiri Perso-Arabic script has come to be associated with Kashmiri Muslims, while the Kashmiri Devanagari script has come to be associated with the Kashmiri Hindu community.[22][23]

Phonology

Kashmiri has the following vowel phonemes:[24]

Vowels

  Front Central Back
High i iː ɨ ɨː u uː
Mid e eː ə əː o oː
Low a aː ɔ ɔː

Consonants

Bilabial Dental Alveolar Retroflex Alveolo
-palatal		 Velar Glottal
Nasal m n̪
Stop /
Affricate		 plain p b t̪ d̪ ts ʈ ɖ tʃ dʒ k ɡ
aspirated pʰ t̪ʰ tsʰ ʈʰ tʃʰ kʰ
Fricative s z ʃ h
Approximant l̪ j w
Trill r̪

Grammar

Kashmiri, like German and Old English and unlike other Indo-Aryan languages, has V2 word order.[25]

There are four cases in Kashmiri: nominative, genitive, and two oblique cases: the ergative and the dative case.[26]

Vocabulary

Though Kashmiri has thousands of loan words (mainly from Persian and Arabic) due to the arrival of Islam in the Valley, however, it remains basically an Indo-Aryan language close to Rigvedic Sanskrit. There is a minor difference between the Kashmiri spoken by a Hindu and a Muslim. For 'fire', a traditional Hindu will use the word agun while a Muslim more often will use the Arabic word nar.[13][14] Shashishekhar Toshkhani, a scholar on Kashmir's heritage,[10][27] provides a detailed analysis where he shows extensive linguistic relationship between the Sanskrit language and the Kashmiri language, and presents detailed arguments contesting George Grierson's classification of the Kashmiri language as a member of the Dardic sub-group (of the Indo-Aryan group of languages). Kashmiri has strong links to Rigvedic Sanskrit. For example, 'cloud' is obur, 'rain' is ruud (from the Rigvedic Aryan god Rudra).

Preservation of old Indo-Aryan vocabulary

Kashmiri retains several features of Old Indo-Aryan that have been lost in other modern Indo-Aryan languages such as Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi and Sindhi.[28] For instance, it preserves the dvi- form for prefixes in numbers which is found in Sanskrit, but has been replaced entirely by ba-/bi- in other Indo-Aryan languages. Seventy-two is dusatath in Kashmiri and dvisaptati in Sanskrit, but bahattar in Hindi-Urdu and Punjabi.[28] Some vocabulary features that Kashmiri preserves clearly date from the Vedic Sanskrit era and had already been lost even in Classical Sanskrit. This includes the word-form yodvai (meaning if), which is mainly found in Vedic Sanskrit texts. Classical Sanskrit and modern Indo-Aryan render the word as yadi.[28] Certain words in Kashmiri even appear to stem from Indo-Aryan even predating the Vedic period. For instance, there was an /s/ → /h/ consonant shift in some words that had already occurred with Vedic Sanskrit (this tendency is even stronger in the Iranian branch of Indo-Iranian), yet is lacking in Kashmiri equivalents. The word rahit in Vedic Sanskrit and modern Hindi-Urdu (meaning excluding or without) corresponds to rost in Kashmiri. Similarly, sahit (meaning including or with) corresponds to sost in Kashmiri.[28]

First person pronoun

Both the Indo-Aryan and Iranian branches of the Indo-Iranian family have demonstrated a strong tendency to eliminate the distinctive first person pronoun ("I") used in the nominative (subject) case. The Indo-European root for this is reconstructed as *eǵHom, which is preserved in Sanskrit as aham and in Avestan Persian as azam. This contrasts with the m- form ("me", "my") that is used for the accusative, genitive, dative, ablative cases. Sanskrit and Avestan both used forms such as ma(-m). However, in languages such as Modern Persian, Baluchi, Hindi and Punjabi, the distinct nominative form has been entirely lost and replaced with m- in words such as ma-n and mai. However, Kashmiri belongs to a relatively small set that preserves the distinction. 'I' is bi/ba/boh in various Kashmiri dialects, distinct from the other me terms. 'Mine' is myoon in Kashmiri. Other Indo-Aryan languages that preserve this feature include Dogri (aun vs me-), Gujarati (hu-n vs ma-ri), and Braj (hau-M vs mai-M). The Iranian Pashto preserves it too (za vs. maa).[29]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Kashmiri at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ 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. ↑ Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student's Handbook, Edinburgh
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Abstract of speakers’ strength of languages and mother tongues – 2001, Census of India (retrieved 17 March 2008)
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 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. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ 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.
  25. ↑ Concerning V2 order in Kashmiri, see Hook (1976:133ff).
  26. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  27. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 28.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  29. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

Further reading

  • Chapter on Indo-Persian Literature in Kashmir in "The Rise, Growth And Decline Of Indo-Persian Literature" by R. M. Chopra, 2012, published by Iran Culture House, New Delhi. 2nd Edition 2013.
  • Koul,Omkar N & Kashi Wali Modern Kashmiri Grammar Hyattsville, Dunwoody Press, 2006.

External links

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