Rushani is one of the
Pamir languages spoken in
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
and
Tajikistan
Tajikistan (, ; tg, Тоҷикистон, Tojikiston; russian: Таджикистан, Tadzhikistan), officially the Republic of Tajikistan ( tg, Ҷумҳурии Тоҷикистон, Jumhurii Tojikiston), is a landlocked country in Centr ...
.
Rushani is relatively closer to all Northern
Pamiri languages
The Pamir languages are an areal group of the Eastern Iranian languages, spoken by numerous people in the Pamir Mountains, primarily along the Panj River and its tributaries.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Pamir language family was s ...
sub-group whether it is
Shughni,
Yazgulami,
Sarikuli or
Oroshori sharing many grammatical and vocabulary similarity with all of them especially with
Shughni and thus some linguists consider it a dialect of
Shughni.
Rushan is divided into two parts by
Panj
Panj () is a city in southern Tajikistan which is situated on the Afghan border, some south of the capital Dushanbe. It is located along the north bank of the river Panj, from which it derives its name. The population of the town is 12,500 (Jan ...
river where on right bank along
Bartang river to the East located Rushan district of
GBAO
Gorno-Badakhshan, officially the Badakhshan Mountainous Autonomous Region,, abbr. / is an autonomous region in eastern Tajikistan, in the Pamir Mountains. It makes up nearly forty-five percent of the country's land area, but only two perc ...
,
Tajikistan
Tajikistan (, ; tg, Тоҷикистон, Tojikiston; russian: Таджикистан, Tadzhikistan), officially the Republic of Tajikistan ( tg, Ҷумҳурии Тоҷикистон, Jumhurii Tojikiston), is a landlocked country in Centr ...
and on the left side located several villages of Roshan area in northern part of the Sheghnan District, in the
Badakhshan Province
Badakhshan Province (Persian/ Uzbek: , ''Badaxšān'') is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the northeastern part of the country. It is bordered by Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan in the north and the Pakistani regions of Lower ...
of
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
and the
Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region
Gorno-Badakhshan, officially the Badakhshan Mountainous Autonomous Region,, abbr. / is an autonomous region in eastern Tajikistan, in the Pamir Mountains. It makes up nearly forty-five percent of the country's land area, but only two percen ...
in Tajikistan. Afghani Roshan consists of six villages including Rubotin, Paguor, Chawed, York, Shaikhin and Chasnud, five of which are located on the bank of the river
Panj
Panj () is a city in southern Tajikistan which is situated on the Afghan border, some south of the capital Dushanbe. It is located along the north bank of the river Panj, from which it derives its name. The population of the town is 12,500 (Jan ...
, which meets at the border of Tajikistan.
[Muller, K. 2010: ''Language in Community-Oriented and Contact-Oriented Domains: The Case of the Shughni of Tajakistan.'' SIL International.] Most Rushani speakers belong to the
Ismaili branch of
Shi'a Islam.
Language use
Rushani, like Shughni, is only used in unofficial settings. All of the children in the community learn Rushani as their first language and rely heavily on it until they enroll in school. It is only then that they learn the official language of the country.
Adult speakers are all bi- or tri-lingual in
Tajik and
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
.
Traditionally Rushani was not a written language, with Rushani speakers writing in
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
.
[Dodykhudoeva, L. 2007: ''Revitalization of minority languages: comparative dictionary of key cultural terms in the languages and dialects of the Shugni-Rushani group. London: SOAS.] Writing systems have been developed for the language using
Cyrillic and
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
scripts, for example for use in translation of parts of the bible by the
Institute for Bible Translation The Institute for Bible Translation (IBT) was founded in Stockholm, Sweden in 1973 by the Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnian-Croats, Croatian poet Borislav Arapović, its main task being to publish Bibles for "non-Slavic peoples in Slavic cou ...
.
Verbs
Rushani is unusual in having a
transitive alignment system – a so-called ''double-
oblique
Oblique may refer to:
* an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / )
*Oblique angle, in geometry
*Oblique triangle, in geometry
* Oblique lattice, in geometry
* Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the b ...
'' clause structure – in the past tense. That is, in the past tense, the agent and object of a transitive verb are both marked, while the subject of an intransitive verb is not. In the present tense, the object of the transitive verb is marked, the other two roles are not – that is, a typical
nominative–accusative alignment.
[J.R. Payne, 'Language Universals and Language Types', in Collinge, ed. 1990. ''An Encyclopedia of Language''. Routledge. From Payne, 1980.] See
transitive alignment for examples.
Literature
*
Zarubin, I.I. Bartangskie i rushanskie teksty i slovar. Moskva : Izd-vo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1937.
*Payne, John, "Pamir languages" in ''Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum'', ed. Schmitt (1989), 417–444.
*Payne, John. "The decay of ergativity in Pamir languages." ''Lingua'' 51:147-186.
References
External links
* Rushan
at the Endangered Languages Project
{{Iranian languages
Pamir languages
Eastern Iranian languages
Languages of Tajikistan
Endangered languages of Iran
Endangered languages of Tajikistan