Nuristani languages

"Pisaca languages" redirects here. For another group of languages called Pisaca, see Dardic languages.

Nuristani
Kafiri
Geographic distribution	Nuristan, Afghanistan Chitral, Pakistan
Linguistic classification	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Nuristani
Proto-language	Proto-Nuristani
Subdivisions	Katë Wasi-wari Southern Nuristani
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, also known as Kafiri languages, are one of the three groups within the Indo-Iranian language family, alongside the much larger Indo-Aryan and Iranian groups. They have approximately 130,000 speakers primarily in eastern 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 (or Kafiristan) region is located at the northern intersection of the Indian subcontinent and the Iranian plateau. The languages were previously often grouped with Indo-Aryan (Dardic sub-group) or Iranian until they were finally classified as forming a third branch in Indo-Iranian.

Dameli is often considered to be Nuristani instead of Dardic due to the preponderance of vocabulary of Nuristani origin, though the pronoun system and morphology are characteristically of Dardic origin.

Languages

A map of Nuristani Languages by Georg Morgenstierne

• Katë (Kamkata-vari, Bashgali, includes the Western, Northeastern, and Southeastern dialects) 40,000 speakers
• Wasi-wari (Prasuni) 8,000 speakers
• Southern:
  • Askunu (Ashkun) 40,000 speakers
  • Waigali (Nuristani Kalasha, Kalasha-ala) 12,000 speakers
  • Tregami (Gambiri) 3,500 speakers
  • Zemiaki 500 speakers

History

The prehistory of Nuristani is unclear, except that it clearly belongs to the Indo-Iranian subgroup. However, its classification within Indo-Iranian was debated until recent research settled its position as a third branch distinct from Indo-Aryan or Iranian, though extensive Indo-Aryan influence can be detected within the Nuristani languages, pointing to prolonged contact. According to Jakob Halfmann (2023), Nuristani may have had contact with Bactrian in the 1st millennium.

The Nuristani languages were not described in literature until the 19th century. The older name for the region was Kafiristan and the languages were termed Kafiri or Kafiristani, but the terms have been replaced by the present ones since the conversion of the region to Islam in 1896. The Kalash people are very close to the Nuristani people in terms of culture and historic religion, and are divided between speakers of the Nuristani language, Kalasha-ala, and an Indo-Aryan language, Kalaṣa-mun.

The languages are spoken by tribal peoples in an extremely isolated mountainous region of the Hindu Kush, one that has never been subject to any real central authority in modern times. This area is located along the northeastern border of present-day Afghanistan and adjacent portions of the northwest of present-day Pakistan. These languages have not received the attention linguists would like to give them. Considering the very small number of people estimated to speak them, they must be considered endangered languages.

Many Nuristani people now speak other languages, such as Dari and Pashto (two official languages of Afghanistan) and Khowar.

Proto-Nuristani

Proto-Nuristani
PNur
Reconstruction of	Nuristani languages
Reconstructed ancestors	Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-Iranian

The earliest divergence of Nuristani from the other Indo-Iranian languages may be indicated by the fact that the Ruki sound law does not apply after *u: e.g. Southeastern Katë (Kamdesh) musë /muˈsɘ/ "mouse".

Nuristani shares with Iranian the merger of the tenuis and breathy-voiced consonants, the preservation of the distinction between the two sets of Indo-Iranian voiced palatals (which merged in Indo-Aryan), and the fronting of the Proto-Indo-Iranian primary palatal consonants. The latter were retained as dental affricates in Proto-Nuristani, in contrast to simplification to sibilants (in most of Iranian) or interdentals (in Persian). Nuristani is distinguished by the lack of debuccalizing /s/ to /h/ as in Indo-Aryan. Later on /*d͡z/ shifted to /z/ in all Nuristani varieties other than Southeastern Katë and Tregami, while /*t͡s/ shifted to /s/ only in Ashkun, though some instances of /*t͡s/ in Ashkun are retained as /t͡s/ instead.

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

• Dardic languages

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.