Kalasha language

Not to be confused with Kalasha-ala language.

Kalasha
Kalashamondr
Native to	Pakistan (Chitral District)
Region	Bumburet, Rumbur and Birir, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Ethnicity	Kalash
Native speakers	5,000 (2000)
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Dardic Chitrali Kalasha
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kls
Glottolog	kala1372
Linguasphere	59-AAB-ab

Kalasha (also known as Kalashamondr) is an Indo-European language in the Indo-Aryan branch spoken by the Kalash people, further classified as a Dardic language in the Chitral group. The Kalasha language is phonologically atypical because it contrasts plain, long, nasal, and retroflex vowels as well as combinations of these (Heegård & Mørch 2004).

Kalasha is spoken by the Kalash people who reside in the remote valleys of Bumburet, Birir and Rumbur, which are west of Ayun, which is ten miles down the river from Chitral Town, high in the Hindu Kush mountains in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. The Kalash have their own religion, with gods and goddesses. There are an estimated 5,000 speakers of Kalasha.

According to Badshah Munir Bukhari, one of the world's leading authorities on this subject, "Kalasha" is also the ethnic name for the Nuristani inhabitants of a region southwest of the Kalasha Valleys, in the Waygal and middle Pech Valleys of Afghanistan's Nuristan Province. The term "Kalasha" seems to have been adopted by the Kalasha speakers of Chitral from the Nuristanis of Waygal, who for a time expanded up to southern Chitral several centuries ago. However, there is no close connection between the Indo-Aryan language Kalasha-mun and the Nuristani language Kalasha-ala, which descend from different branches of the Indo-Iranian languages.

Until the late 20th century, Kalasha was an undocumented language. More recently, through the work of a Greek NGO and local Kalasha elders seeking to preserve their oral traditions, a new Kalasha alphabet has been created. Working in close collaboration with various international researchers and linguists, Kalasha linguist Taj Khan Kalash organized first "Kalasha Orthography Conference" in Islamabad Pakistan. Having moved to Thessaloniki, Greece, to study linguistics in the Aristotle University, he and the Greek NGO Mesogaia took on the task of compiling the script and creating The Alphabet Book, a primer used to teach the alphabet to the Kalasha children. In 2004 he was able to raise funds to publish the first alphabet book of the Kalasha language based on Roman script designed by an Australian linguist, Gregory R. Cooper.

Of all the languages in the subcontinent, Kalasha is likely the most conservative, along with the nearby western Dardic language Khowar. In a few cases, Kalasha is even more conservative than Khowar, e.g. in retaining voiced aspirate consonants, which have disappeared from most other Dardic languages.

Some of the typical retentions of sounds and clusters (and meanings) are seen in the following list. However, note some common New Indo-Aryan and Dardic features as well.

Phonology

Below is set out the phonology of the Kalasha Language.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i ĩ i˞ ĩ˞		u ũ u˞ ũ˞
Mid	e ẽ e˞ ẽ˞		o õ o˞ õ˞
Open		a ã a˞ ã˞

Consonants

As with other Dardic languages, the phonemic status of the breathy voiced series is debatable. Some analyses are unsure of whether they are phonemic or simply lexical—i.e., clusters of consonants with /h/.

		Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Postalveolar	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal		m	n	(ɳ)	(ɲ)	(ŋ)
Stop	voiceless	p	t	ʈ		k	(q)
	voiced	b	d	ɖ		ɡ
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ	ʈʰ		kʰ
	breathy voiced	bʱ	dʱ	ɖʱ		ɡʱ
Affricate	voiceless		ts	tʂ	tʃ
	voiced		dz	dʐ	dʒ
	aspirated		tsʰ	tʂʰ	tʃʰ
	breathy voiced				dʒʱ
Fricative	voiceless		s	ʂ	ʃ	(x)		h
	voiced			ʐ	ʒ	(ɣ)
Approximant			l		j	w
Rhotic			r	(ɽ)

The phonemes /x ɣ q/ are found in loanwords.

Comparative

The following table compares Kalash words to their cognates in other Indo-Aryan languages.

English	Kalasha	Sanskrit	New age Hindi
bone	athi, aṭhí	asthi	Hindi -; Nepali ā̃ṭh 'the ribs'
urine	mutra, mútra	mūtra	H. mūt
village	grom	grama	H. gā̃u;Sanskrit gramam
rope	rajuk, raĵhú-k	rajju	H. rassi, lejur
smoke	thum	dhūma	H. dhūā̃, dhuwā̃
meat	mos	maṃsa	H. mā̃s, mās, māsā
dog	shua, śõ.'a	śvan	H. -; Sinhal. suvan
ant	pililak, pilílak	pipīla, pippīlika	H. pipṛā
son	put, putr	putra	H. pūt
long	driga, dríga	dīrgha	H. dīha
eight	asht, aṣṭ	aṣṭā	H. āṭh
broken	china, čhína	chinna	H. chīn-nā 'to snatch';
kill	nash	nash, naś, naśyati	H. nā̆s 'destroy'

Grammar

Examples of conservative features in Kalasha and Khowar are (note, NIA = New Indo-Aryan, MIA = Middle Indo-Aryan, OIA = Old Indo-Aryan):

• Preservation of intervocalic /m/ (reduced to a nasalized /w/ or /v/ in late MIA elsewhere), e.g. Kal. grom, Kho. gram "village" < OIA grāma
• Non-deletion of intervocalic /t/, preserved as /l/ or /w/ in Kalasha, /r/ in Khowar (deleted in middle MIA elsewhere), e.g. Kho. brār "brother" < OIA bhrātṛ; Kal. ʃau < *ʃal, Kho. ʃor "hundred" < OIA śata
• Preservation of the distinction between all three OIA sibilants (dental /s/, palatal /ś/, retroflex /ṣ/); in most of the subcontinent, these three had already merged before 200 BC (early MIA)
• Preservation of sibilant + consonant, stop + /r/ clusters (lost by early MIA in most other places):
  • Kal. aṣṭ, Kho. oṣṭ "eight" < OIA aṣṭā; Kal. hast, Kho. host "hand" < OIA hasta; Kal. istam "bunch" < OIA stamba; Kho. istōr "pack horse" < OIA sthōra; Kho. isnār "bathed" < OIA snāta; Kal. Kho. iskow "peg" < OIA *skabha; Kho. iśper "white" < OIA śvēta; Kal. isprɛs, Kho. iśpreṣi "mother-in-law" < OIA śvaśru; Kal. piṣṭ "back" < OIA pṛṣṭha; Kho. aśrū "tear" < OIA aśru.
  • Kho. kren- "buy" < OIA krīṇ-; Kal. grom, Kho. grom "village" < OIA grāma; Kal. gŕä "neck" < OIA grīva; Kho. griṣp "summer" < OIA grīṣma
• Preservation of /ts/ in Kalasha (reinterpreted as a single phoneme)
• Direct preservation of many OIA case endings as so-called "layer 1" case endings (as opposed to newer "layer 2" case endings, typically tacked onto a layer-1 oblique case):
  • Nominative
  • Oblique (agentive?): Pl. Kal. -en, -an, Kho. -an, -an
  • Genitive: Kal. -as (sg.), -an (pl.); Kho. -o (sg.), -an, -ān (pl.)
  • Dative: Kho. -a < OIA dative -āya, elsewhere lost already in late OIA
  • Instrumental: Kal. -an, Kho. -en < OIA -ēna
  • Ablative: Kal. -ou, -ani, Kho. -ār
• Preservation of more than one verbal conjugation (e.g. Kho. mār-īm "I kill" vs. bri-um "I die")
• Preservation of OIA distinction between "primary" (non-past) and "secondary" (past) endings and of a past-tense "augment" in a-, both lost entirely elsewhere: Kal. pim "I drink", apis "I drank"; kārim "I do", akārim "I did"
• Preservation of a verbal preterite tense (see examples above), with normal nominative/accusative marking and normal verbal agreement, as opposed to the ergative-type past tenses with nominal-type agreement elsewhere in NIA (originally based on a participial passive construction)

Bibliography

• Maps showing distribution of words among people of Kafiristan.

External links

• Richard Strand's Nuristan Site
• Reiko and Jun's Japanese Kalasha Page
• Hindi/Urdu-English-Kalasha-Khowar-Nuristani-Pashtu Comparative Word List
• Frontier Language Institute The Kalasha Dictionary
• Georg Morgenstierne multimedia database
• Kalasha People Online A Kalasha Blog