Kalasha language

Not to be confused with Kalasha-ala.

Kalasha (IPA: [kaɭaʂaː], locally: Kal'as'amondr) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Kalash people, in the Chitral District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. There are an estimated 4,100 speakers of Kalasha. It is an endangered language and there is an ongoing language shift to Khowar.

Kalasha
Kal'as'amondr / کالؕاشؕا موندر
Native to	Pakistan (Chitral District)
Region	Kalasha Valleys
Ethnicity	Kalash
Native speakers	5,000 (2000)
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Dardic Chitrali Kalasha
Dialects	Urtsuniwar
Writing system	Arabic script, Latin script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kls
Glottolog	kala1372
ELP	Kalasha
Linguasphere	59-AAB-ab

Kalasha should not be confused with the nearby Nuristani language Waigali (Kalasha-ala). According to Badshah Munir Bukhari, a researcher on the Kalash, "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 name "Kalasha" seems to have been adopted for the Kalash people 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 (Kalasha) and the Nuristani language Kalasha-ala (Waigali), which descend from different branches of the Indo-Iranian languages.

History

Early scholars to have done work on Kalasha include the 19th-century orientalist Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner and the 20th-century linguist Georg Morgenstierne. More recently, studies have been undertaken by Elena Bashir and several others. The development of practical literacy materials has been associated with the Kalasha linguist Taj Khan Kalash. The Southern Kalash or Urtsun Kalash shifted to a Khowar-influenced dialect of Kalasha-mun in the 20th century called Urtsuniwar.

Classification

Of all the languages in Pakistan, Kalasha is likely the most conservative, along with the nearby 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

The Kalasha language is phonologically atypical because it contrasts plain, long, nasal and retroflex vowels as well as combinations of these (Heegård & Mørch 2004). Set out below is the phonology of Kalasha:

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 allophonic—i.e., the regular pronunciations of clusters of voiced consonants with /h/.

		Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Postalveolar/ Palatal	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	tɕ
	voiced		dz	dʐ	dʑ
	aspirated		tsʰ	tʂʰ	tɕʰ
	breathy voiced				dʑʱ
Fricative	voiceless		s	ʂ	ɕ	(x)		h
	voiced		z	ʐ	ʑ	(ɣ)
Approximant			l ɫ		j	w
Rhotic			r	(ɽ)

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

Vocabulary comparison

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

English	Kalasha	Sanskrit	other Indo-Aryan languages
bone	athi, aṭhí	asthi	Nepali: ā̃ṭh 'the ribs'
urine	mutra, mútra	mūtra	Hindi: mūt; Assamese: mut
village	grom	grama	Hindi: gā̃w; Assamese: gãü
rope	rajuk, raĵhú-k	rajju	Hindi: lej, lejur; Assamese: lezu
smoke	thum	dhūma	Hindi: dhūā̃, dhuwā̃; Assamese: dhü̃a
meat	mos	maṃsa	Hindi: mā̃s, mās, māsā
dog	shua, śõ.'a	śvan	Sinhala: suvan
ant	pililak, pilílak	pipīla, pippīlika	Hindi: pipṛā; Assamese: pipora
son	put, putr	putra	Hindi: pūt; Assamese: put
long	driga, dríga	dīrgha	Hindi: dīha; Assamese: digha
eight	asht, aṣṭ	aṣṭā	Hindi: āṭh; Assamese: ath
broken	china, čhína	chinna	Hindi: chīn-nā 'to snatch'
kill	nash	nash, naś, naśyati	Hindi: nā̆s 'destroy'

Conservative traits

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 (< skambha); 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 (Animate): Pl. Kal. -an, Kho. -an < OIA -ān
  • Genitive: Kal. -as (sg.), -an (pl.); Kho. -o (sg.), -an, -ān (pl.) < OIA -asya (sg.), āṇām (pl.)
  • Dative: Kal. -a, Kho. -a < OIA dative -āya, elsewhere lost already in late OIA
  • Instrumental: Kal. -an, Kho. -en < OIA -ēna
  • Ablative: Kal. -au, Kho. -ār < OIA -āt
  • Locative: Kal. -ai, Kho. -i < OIA -ai
• 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", akāris "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)

Further reading

• Kochetov, Alexei and Arsenault, Paul and Petersen, Jan Heegård and Kalas, Sikandar and Kalash, Taj Khan (2021). "Kalasha (Bumburet variety)". Illustrations of the IPA. Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 51 (3): 468–489. doi:10.1017/S0025100319000367{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link), with supplementary sound recordings.

Bibliography

• Bashir, Elena L. (1988). Topics in Kalasha Syntax: An Areal and Typological Perspective. (Ph.D. dissertation) University of Michigan.
• Cacopardo, Alberto M.; Cacopardo, Augusto S. (2001). Gates of Peristan: History, Religion, and Society in the Hindu Kush. Rome: Instituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente.
• Decker, Kendall D. (1992). Languages of Chitral. Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan. Vol. 5. National Institute of Pakistani Studies. p. 257. ISBN 969-8023-15-1.
• Gerard Fussman. Atlas Linguistique Des Parles Dardes Et Kafirs. Vol. (two umes). Maps showing distribution of words among people of Kafiristan.
• Heegård, Jan; Mørch, Ida Elisabeth (March 2004). "Retroflex vowels and other peculiarities in Kalasha sound system". In Anju Saxena; Jadranka Gvozdanovic (eds.). Synchronic and Diachronic Aspects of Himalayan Linguistics. Selected Proceedings of the 7th Himalayan Languages Symposium held in Uppsala, Sweden. The Hague: Mouton.
• Jettmar, Karl (1985). Religions of the Hindu Kush. Aris & Phillips. ISBN 0-85668-163-6.
• Kochetov, Alexei; Arsenault, Paul (2008), Retroflex harmony in Kalasha: Agreement or spreading? (PDF), NELS, vol. 39, Cornell University
• Morgenstierne, Georg (1926). Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan. Serie C I-2. Oslo: Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning. ISBN 0-923891-09-9.
• Morgenstierne, Georg (1973). The Kalasha Language & Notes on Kalasha. Indo-Iranian Frontier Languages. Vol. IV. Oslo. ISBN 4871875245.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Sir George Scott Robertson (1896). The Kafirs of the Hindukush.
• Strand, Richard F. (1973). "Notes on the Nûristânî and Dardic Languages". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 93 (3): 297–305. doi:10.2307/599462. JSTOR 599462.
• Strand, Richard F. (2001). "The Tongues of Peristân". In Alberto M. Cacopardo; Augusto S. Cacopardo (eds.). Gates of Peristan: History, Religion and Society in the Hindu Kush. Rome: Instituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente. pp. 251–259.
• Strand, Richard F. (2022). "Phonatory Location in the Far North-Western Indo-Âryan Languages". In Baart, Joan L.G.; Liljegren, Henrik; Payne, Thomas E. (eds.). Languages of Northern Pakistan: Essays in Memory of Carla Radloff. Karachi: Oxford University Press. pp. 446–495.
• Trail, Ronald L.; Cooper, Gregory R. (1999). Kalasha dictionary—with English and Urdu. Studies in Languages of Northern Pakistan. Vol. 7. Islamabad: National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University and Summer Institute of Linguistics. ISBN 4871875237.

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
• Frontier Language Institute Kalasha dictionary