Khetrānī, or Khetranki, 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 ...
of north-eastern
Balochistan
Balochistan ( ; bal, بلۏچستان; also romanised as Baluchistan and Baluchestan) is a historical region in Western and South Asia, located in the Iranian plateau's far southeast and bordering the Indian Plate and the Arabian Sea coastline. ...
. It is spoken by the majority of the
Khetrans, a
Baloch tribe that occupies a hilly tract in the
Sulaiman Mountains
The Sulaiman Mountains, also known as Kōh-e Sulaymān ( Balochi/Urdu/ fa, ; "Mountains of Solomon") or Da Kasē Ghrūna ( ps, د كسې غرونه; "Mountains of Kasi"), are a north–south extension of the southern Hindu Kush mountain system i ...
comprising the whole of
Barkhan District
Barkhan ( Balochi: بارکھئوں, ur, , ) is a district in the Pakistani province of Balochistan. It shares its borders with the province of Punjab to the east and the Balochistan districts of Dera Bugti to the south, Kohlu to the west, Lo ...
as well as small parts of neighbouring
Kohlu District
Kohlu district ( bal, کوہلو, ur, ) is a district of the Balochistan province of Pakistan. It is bounded in the north by Loralai District, Dera Bugti in the south, Barkhan in the east, and Sibi District in the west.
Demographics
At th ...
to the south-west, and
Musakhel District to the north. The ethnic Khetran population found to the east in the Vehova Tehsil of
Taunsa Sharif District of Punjab instead speak Saraiki. Alternative names for the language attested at the start of the 20th century are ''Barāzai'' and ''Jāfaraki''.
Khetrani has grammatical features in common with both
Saraiki and with
Sindhi, but is not mutually intelligible with either. Khetrani has a relatively small number of
Balochi loanwords in its vocabulary. Khetrani was formerly a dialect continuum of both Sindhi and Saraiki.
It is likely to have been formerly spoken over a wider area, which has been reduced with the expansion of
Pashto
Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani ().
Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official langua ...
from the north and Balochi from the south-east. The earlier suggestion that Khetrani might be a remnant of a
Dardic language has been found "difficult to substantiate" by more detailed recent research.
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History
Footnotes
Bibliography
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External links
Worldview of Khetran
{{Northwestern Indo-Aryan languages
Languages of Balochistan, Pakistan
Northwestern Indo-Aryan languages