Kishtwari
  • کشتواڑی
  • किश्तवाड़ी
Native toJammu and Kashmir
EthnicityKishtwari
Native speakers
40,000 (2011 census)[1][2]
Indo-European
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
Glottologkish1245

Kishtwari or Kashtwari is a northern Indo-Aryan language closely related to the Kashmiri language, with strong influences from neighboring Western Pahari varieties, spoken in the Kishtwar district of Jammu and Kashmir, India.

Classification

Kishtwari has historically been classified as a dialect of Kashmiri by scholars such as George Abraham Grierson, and is partially intelligible with Kashmiri, but Kishtwari speakers maintain a separate identity from Kashmiri people, culturally identifying more closely with neighboring Pahari populations of Paddar, Doda-Bhadarwah and the rest of the Chenab Valley. Linguists like Siddheshwar Varma consider Kishtwari an intermediate between Western Pahari languages and Kashmiri. If considered a divergent dialect of Kashmiri, Kishtwari is one of two Kashmiri varieties spoken outside of the Kashmir Valley (the other being Poguli, which is even more distinct and not intelligible with either Kashmiri or Kishtwari). Kishtwari is also tonal, like neighbouring languages such as Dogri and Punjabi.[3][4]

Overview

Grierson, in his Linguistic Survey of India, classified Kishtwari as a highly divergent variety of Kashmiri that had been profoundly influenced by neighbouring Punjabi and Western Pahari languages.[5] Grierson noted that Kishtwari is more conservative in certain aspects than other Kashmiri dialects, as evidenced by the retention of subject pronoun thu, in addition to the present participle an, features that have disappeared in Standard Kashmiri. A wordlist and preliminary grammatical sketch of Kishtwari were compiled in The Languages of the Northern Himalayas.[6]

The 1911 Census of India recorded 7,464 speakers of Kishtwari.

Script

Grierson remarks that an idiosyncratic variant of Takri is used to write the Kishtwari language; as well as observing that there does not appear to be standard spelling nor a consistent orthography.

Specimen in Kashtwari language from Grierson's LSI Vol. VIII, Pt. II, page 386

References

  1. ↑ CENSUS OF INDIA 2011. "LANGUAGE" (PDF). Government of India. p. 7.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  2. ↑ "C-16 Population By Mother Tongue". Census of India 2011. Office of the Registrar General.
  3. ↑ Sheikh, Aejaz Mohammed; Kuchey, Sameer Ahmad (2014). "Kishtwari". Indian Linguistics. 75 (3–4): 55–66. ISSN 0378-0759.
  4. ↑ Mahapatra, B. P. (1989). Constitutional languages. Presses Université Laval. p. 270. ISBN 978-2-7637-7186-1.
  5. ↑ Grierson, George Abraham Grierson. Linguistic Survey of India. Vol. 8. pp. 344–383.
  6. ↑ Bailey, Thomas Grahame. Languages of the Northern Himalayas. pp. 61–70.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.