Sarazi or Sirazi (also spelled Siraji) is an

Indo-Aryan language The Indo-Aryan languages (or sometimes Indic languages) are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily concentrated in India, Pa ...

Jammu and Kashmir Jammu and Kashmir may refer to: * Kashmir, the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent * Jammu and Kashmir (union territory), a region administered by India as a union territory * Jammu and Kashmir (state), a region administered ...

, India. It is native to the Saraz region, a hilly area taking up the northern half of

Doda district Doda is a district in the eastern part of Jammu Division in the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The district consists of 18 tehsils viz. Thathri, Bhaderwah, Doda, Mohalla, Bhagwa, Assar, Bhalla, Gundna, Marmat, Kahara, G ...

and parts of neighbouring Ramban and

Kishtwar Kishtwar is a town, municipality and administrative headquarter of the Kishtwar District in the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The district was carved out of the Doda district in 2007. It is located in the Jammu division. T ...

districts. Sarazi is spoken as a first language by people (as of 2001), primarily Hindus, but it is also used as a

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

of the Saraz region and so is also spoken as a second language by Muslims, most of whom are native speakers of

Kashmiri Kashmiri may refer to: * People or things related to the Kashmir Valley or the broader region of Kashmir * Kashmiris, an ethnic group native to the Kashmir Valley * Kashmiri language, their language People with the name * Kashmiri Saikia Baruah ...

. Sarazi has similarities both to Kashmiri, and to neighbouring

Western Pahari languages The Western Pahari languages are a group of Northern Indo-Aryan languages that are spoken in the state of Himachal Pradesh, Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir and parts of Uttarakhand and Punjab Languages The following lists the languages cla ...

Bhaderwahi Bhadarwahi is an Indo-Aryan language of the Western Pahari group spoken in the Bhaderwah region of Jammu and Kashmir, India. The name Bhadarwahi can be understood either in a narrow sense as referring to the dialect, locally known as Bhiḍl� ...

, though it is nowadays most often classified with the latter. Various local names for the language, which may represent distinct dialects, include ''Bhagwali'', ''Deswali'', and ''Korarwali''. Sarazi is not often used in writing, but when written, the default choice for a script falls on

Perso-Arabic The Persian alphabet ( fa, الفبای فارسی, Alefbâye Fârsi) is a writing system that is a version of the Arabic script used for the Persian language spoken in Iran ( Western Persian) and Afghanistan (Dari Persian) since the 7th cent ...

. The Latin script is also common, whereas

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental syste ...

and the historical

Takri script The Tākri script (Takri (Chamba): ; Takri (Jammu/Dogra): ; sometimes called Tankri ) is an abugida writing system of the Brahmic family of scripts. It is derived from the Sharada script formerly employed for Kashmiri. It is the sister script ...

are encountered occasionally.

Classification

In the early 20th century,

G.A. Grierson Sir George Abraham Grierson (7 January 1851 – 9 March 1941) was an Irish administrator and linguist in British India. He worked in the Indian Civil Service but an interest in philology and linguistics led him to pursue studies in the languag ...

observed the similarities with both Kashmiri and with Western Pahari languages, and while noting that Sarazi can almost equally well be classified with either of the two, nonetheless opted to treat it as a dialect of Kashmiri on the basis of shared features in the verbal paradigm and elsewhere. Although Sarazi is still sometimes perceived as a Kashmiri dialect, recent studies have generally placed it as a member of the Western Pahari group. This further corresponds with the speakers' own perceptions, who do not see their language as related to Kashmiri, and who consider themselves Pahari rather than Kashmiri. An alternative proposal has seen the language as intermediate between the two groups but independent of either.This is the proposal by , according to whom the characteristics of Dardic and Pahari "have so deeply penetrated the grammatical structure of the dialect that it must be called as fundamentally Dardo-Pahāṛī". This was criticised by . It has also been conjectured that the language could have originally arisen as a creole.

Notable events

A daily news headlines program is broadcast by a news outlet

The Chenab Times ''The Chenab Times'' is a digital news and activist organisation in India founded in 2017. It is known for publishing news in Sarazi and Bhaderwahi languages. History ''The Chenab Times'' derives its name from the Chenab River, which flows th ...

in Sarazi and Bhaderwahi languages to promote them.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * {{Indo-Aryan languages Indo-Aryan languages Languages of Jammu and Kashmir Endangered languages of India