Nuristani languages

Nuristani
Geographic distribution	Nuristan, Kunar, Afghanistan Chitral, Pakistan
Linguistic classification	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Nuristani
Proto-language	Proto-Nuristani
Subdivisions	Katë Prasun Ashkun Nuristani Kalasha Tregami Zemiaki
Language codes
Glottolog	nuri1243
Nuristan region, located on southern range of Hindu Kush
Nuristan Province in modern-day Afghanistan, where most speakers live

The Nuristani languages are one of the three groups within the Indo-Iranian language family, alongside the Indo-Aryan and Iranian groups. They have approximately 214,000 speakers primarily in Nuristan and Kunar provinces in northeastern Afghanistan and a few adjacent valleys in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Chitral District, Pakistan. The region inhabited by the Nuristanis is located in the southern Hindu Kush mountains, and is drained by the Alingar River in the west, the Pech River in the center, and the Landai Sin and Kunar rivers in the east. More broadly, the Nuristan region is located at the northern intersection of the Indian subcontinent and the Iranian plateau.

The Nuristani languages were not described in literature until the 19th century. The older name for the region was Kafiristan (Land of disbelievers) due to their pre-Islamic religious practices, but this term has been abandoned in favor of Nuristan (Land of the enlightened).

Languages

A map of Nuristani Languages by Georg Morgenstierne

Nuristani languages can be classified into:

• Katë, also called Kati or Kamkata-vari, is the most-spoken Nuristani language at 150,000 speakers. It includes the Western, Northeastern, and Southeastern dialects.
• Prasun, also called Vasi-vari, is spoken by 8,000 speakers. Prasun is considered as the most divergent member of the group, featuring a distinct grammar and phonology.
• Ashkun, also called Ashkunu or Sanu-viri, is spoken by 40,000 speakers. Although Ashkun shares commonalities with other Nuristani languages in the southern zone, there are some sound changes in Ashkun that are not shared by any other member.
• Nuristani Kalasha, formerly known as Waigali, is spoken by 12,000 speakers. It is rather closely related with Tregami and Zemiaki. Nuristani Kalasha is distinct from Kalasha-mun, which is an Indo-Aryan language.
• Tregami (lit. 'of three villages') is spoken by 3,500 speakers in the three villages of Gambir, Kaṭâr, and Devoz in the Watapur District of Kunar Province, Afghanistan.
• Zemiaki is spoken by 500 speakers. It is so far the smallest Nuristani language known to exist. Local traditions confirm a historical link with Nuristani Kalasha.

History

See also: Proto-Nuristani language

Nuristani languages are Indo-European languages, ultimately descending from Proto-Indo-European. The prehistory of Nuristani is unclear, except that it apparently belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch. However, its classification within Indo-Iranian was debated until recent scholarship settled its position as a third branch distinct from Indo-Aryan (Dardic sub-group) or Iranian, though extensive Indo-Aryan influence can be detected within the Nuristani languages.

Vocabulary

The most archaic layer of Nuristani lexicon is the common inheritance from Proto-Indo-European, shared with other Indo-European languages. For example, Tregami tre is cognate with English three and Spanish tres.

The next layer is the inheritance from Proto-Indo-Iranian shared with the Indo-Iranian languages since the late 3rd millennium BCE. Nuristani-speaking peoples have since long participated in enduring social contact with Indo-Aryan speakers, leading to a large number of early Indo-Aryan loanwards and relative semantic closeness among the shared cognates between Indo-Aryan and Nuristani. Early forms of Eastern Iranian and Middle Indo-Aryan languages, like Gandhari or other unattested varieties of Indo-Aryan, have shared a general cultural and linguistic milieu with Nuristanis for more than two millennia, as their independent developments continued. For instance, Nuristani languages may have been in contact with Bactrian around the 1st century CE.

Due to their relative isolation, the Nuristani languages have retained some archaic words from the ancient Indo-Iranian religious framework, shared by the historical Nuristani religion and the precursors of Zoroastrianism and Hinduism. For instance, Katë Inrë is parallel to the Hindu deity Indra, from which it derives inrõ "rainbow" (Indra's bow) and inrëṣ "earthquake" (Indra-impulse).

The most recent influx of loanwords into Nuristani is from Persian and Pashto, principally in fields of government, religion, and the sciences. The co-existence of other modern-day Indo-Iranian languages like Dardic and Eastern Iranian languages in the neighboring regions of Nuristan has led to language contact and multilingualism of the present day.

The chart below compares some basic vocabulary among the Nuristani languages.

English	Prasun	Katë	Ashkun	Nuristani Kalasha	Tregami
one	upün	ew	ac̣	ew	yo
two	lü	dyu, dü	du	dü	du
three	ćši	tre	trë	tre	tre
four	čpu	štëvo, što	ćatā	čatā	čātā
five	vuču	puč	põć	pũč	põč
six	vuṣ	ṣu	ṣo	ṣu	ṣu
seven	sëtë	sut	sōt	sot	sut
eight	astë	uṣṭ	ōṣṭ	oṣṭ	voṣṭ
nine	nu	nu	no	nu	nũ
ten	lezë	duć	dos	doš	dåš
eye	ižĩ	ačẽ	aćĩ	ačẽ	ac̣ĩ
tongue	luzuk	diz	žū
gut	vu	řu	ẓo	vřu
name	nom	num	nām	nām

Syntax

Many Nuristani languages have subject–object–verb (SOV) word order, like most of the other Indo-Iranian languages, and unlike the nearby Dardic Kashmiri language, which has verb-second word order.

See also

• Nuristani Swadesh lists
• Indo-Iranian languages
• Nuristanis
• Nuristan
• Chitral District

Bibliography

• Decker, Kendall D. (1992). Languages of Chitral. In: Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan 5. Islamabad: National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University and Summer Institute of Linguistics. ISBN 4-87187-520-2.
• Grjunberg, A. L. (1971). K dialektologii dardskich jazykov (glangali i zemiaki). Indijskaja i iranskaja filologija: Voprosy dialektologii. Moscow.
• Jakob Halfmann (2023). Lād "law": a Bactrian loanword in the Nuristani languages, in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, United Kingdom.
• Morgenstierne, Georg (1926). Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan. Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, Serie C I-2. Oslo. ISBN 0-923891-09-9.
• Jettmar, Karl (1985). Religions of the Hindu Kush ISBN 0-85668-163-6
• Mallory, J. P. In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth. Thames and Hudson, 1989.
• Mallory, James P.; Adams, Douglas Q. "Indo-Iranian Languages". In: Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997.
• Strand, Richard F. "NURESTÂNI LANGUAGES" in Encyclopædia Iranica
• Strand, Richard F. "- Kâmboǰâs and Sakas in the Holly-Oak Mountains.pdf"

Further reading

• Degener, Almuth (2002). "The Nuristani Languages". In Sims-Williams, Nicholas (ed.). Indo-Iranian Languages and Peoples. Proceedings of the British Academy. Vol. 116. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 103–117.
• Fries, Simon; Halfmann, Jakob; Hill, Eugen; Hübner, Denise (2023). "From noun to future tense: The functional diachrony of the l-future in the Nuristani languages and its typological background". STUF – Language Typology and Universals. 76 (1): 53–85. doi:10.1515/stuf-2023-2002.
• Hegedűs, Irén; Blažek, Václav (2010). "On the position of Nuristani within Indo-Iranian". Paper presented at the conference Sound of Indo-European 2 (Opava, Oct 2010).
• Hegedűs, Irén (2022). "Two plant-based numeral classifiers in Nuristani languages: grain and branch". Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics. 9 (1–2): 69–95. doi:10.1515/jsall-2023-1001.
• Kuz’Mina, E.E.; Mallory, J.P. (2007). "The genesis of the dards and nuristani". The Origin of the Indo-Iranians. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. pp. 307–320. doi:10.1163/ej.9789004160545.i-763.90.
• Rybatzki, V. (2013). "Vocabularies from the middle of the 20th century from Afghanistan Part one: Iranian, Nuristani and Dardic materials I.". Acta Orientalia. 66 (3): 297–348. doi:10.1556/aorient.66.2013.3.4. JSTOR 43282518.
• Rybatzki, Volker (2013). "Vocabularies from the middle of the 20th century from Afghanistan Part one: Iranian, Nuristani and Dardic materials II". Acta Orientalia. 66 (4): 443–469. doi:10.1556/aorient.66.2013.4.6. JSTOR 43282530.
• Strand, Richard F. (2022). "Ethnolinguistic and Genetic Clues to Nûristânî Origins". International Journal of Diachronic Linguistics and Linguistic Reconstruction. 19: 267–353.
• Halfmann, Jakob (2024). A Grammatical Description of the Katë Language (Nuristani) (PhD thesis). Universität zu Köln.

External links

• Reiko and Jun's Kalash Page
• Hindi/Urdu-English-Kalasha-Khowar-Nuristani-Pashtu Comparative Word List
• Richard Strand's Nuristân Site This site is the primary source on the linguistics and ethnography of Nuristân and neighboring regions, collected and analyzed over the last forty years by the leading scholar on Nuristân.