The Nuristani languages, formerly known as Kafiri languages, are one of the three groups within the Indo-Iranian language family, alongside the much larger Indo-Aryan and

Iranian Iranian may refer to: * Iran, a sovereign state * Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran * Iranian lan ...

groups. They have approximately 130,000 speakers primarily in eastern

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 a few adjacent valleys in

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (; ps, خېبر پښتونخوا; Urdu, Hindko: خیبر پختونخوا) commonly abbreviated as KP or KPK, is one of the Administrative units of Pakistan, four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the Geography of Pakistan, ...

Chitral District Chitral District ( ur, ) was the largest district in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, covering an area of 14,850 km², before splitting into Upper Chitral District and Lower Chitral District in 2018. Part of the Malakand Div ...

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

. The region inhabited by the

Nuristanis The Nuristanis, formerly known as Kafiristanis, are an ethnic group native to the Nuristan Province of northeastern Afghanistan and Chitral District of northwestern Pakistan. Their languages comprise the Nuristani branch of Indo-Iranian langua ...

is located in the southern

Hindu Kush The Hindu Kush is an mountain range in Central and South Asia to the west of the Himalayas. It stretches from central and western Afghanistan, Quote: "The Hindu Kush mountains run along the Afghan border with the North-West Frontier Province ...

mountains, and is drained by the

Alingar River The Alingar River (also Alingâr) is a river in Laghman Province of eastern Afghanistan. It is one of the major tributaries of the Kabul River, part of the Indus River The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalaya ...

in the west, the

Pech River The Pech River ( ps, پېچ سيند) is located in eastern Afghanistan. Course The Pech River system is fed from glaciers and snow from the Hindu Kush range to its north. The river rises in central Nuristan Province and flows south and southe ...

in the center, and the Landai Sin and Kunar rivers in the east. 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.

Languages

Northern: ** Kamkata-vari (Bashgali, includes the

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...

s Kata-vari,

Kamviri Kamviri () is a dialect of the Kamkata-vari language spoken by 5,000 to 10,000 of the Kom people of Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are slight dialectal differences of the Kamviri speakers of Pakistan. The most used alternative names are ''Kati' ...

, Shekhani and

Mumviri Mumviri is a dialect of the Nuristani Kamkata-vari language, spoken by perhaps 1,500 of the Mumo people of Afghanistan. There are only slight differences to the Kata-vari, Mumviri has Kamviri phonetic features. The most used alternative name i ...

) 40,000 speakers **

Wasi-wari Wasi-wari (Vasi-vari, Wasi-weri) is the language of the Wasi people, spoken in a few villages in the Pârun Valley (Prasun Valley) in Afghanistan. It also goes by the name Prasun or Paruni. Vasi-vari belongs to the Indo-European language famil ...

(Prasuni) 8,000 speakers * Southern: ** Askunu (Ashkun) 40,000 speakers ** Waigali (Kalasha-ala) 12,000 speakers **

Tregami Tregami (Trigami), or ''Katar Gambiri'', is a language spoken in the villages of Gambir, Kaṭâr, and Devoz in the Tregâm Valley off the lower Pech River in the Watapur District of Kunar Province in Afghanistan. The area is in the Hindu Kush ...

(Gambiri) 3,500 speakers ** Zemiaki 500 speakers

History

The Nuristani languages were not described in literature until the 19th century. The older name for the region was

Kafiristan Kāfiristān, or Kāfirstān ( ps, کاپیرستان, prs, کافرستان), is a historical region that covered present-day Nuristan Province in Afghanistan and Chitral District of Pakistan. This historic region lies on, and mainly comprises ...

and the languages were termed

Kafir Kafir ( ar, كافر '; plural ', ' or '; feminine '; feminine plural ' or ') is an Arabic and Islamic term which, in the Islamic tradition, refers to a person who disbelieves in God as per Islam, or denies his authority, or reject ...

i 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 The Kalasha (Kalasha: کالؕاشؕا, romanised: ''Kaḷaṣa)'', or Kalash, are an Indo-Aryan indigenous people residing in the Chitral District of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. The Kalash population in Pakistan numbers only i ...

are very close to the

Nuristani people The Nuristanis, formerly known as Kafiristanis, are an ethnic group native to the Nuristan Province of northeastern Afghanistan and Chitral District of northwestern Pakistan. Their languages comprise the Nuristani branch of Indo-Iranian langua ...

in terms of culture and historic religion, and are divided between speakers of the Nuristani language,

Kalasha-ala Waigali (') is a language spoken by about 10,000 Nuristani people of the Waigal Valley in Afghanistan's Nuristan Province. The native name is ''Kalaṣa-alâ'' 'Kalasha-language'. "Waigali" refers to the dialect of the Väy people of the upp ...

, and 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 ...

, Kalaṣa-mun. There are three different theories about the origins of the Nuristani languages and their place within the

Indo-Iranian languages The Indo-Iranian languages (also Indo-Iranic languages or Aryan languages) constitute the largest and southeasternmost extant branch of the Indo-European language family (with over 400 languages), predominantly spoken in the geographical subre ...

: * following the studies of

Georg Morgenstierne Georg Valentin von Munthe af Morgenstierne (2 January 1892 – 3 March 1978) was a Norwegian professor of linguistics with the University of Oslo (UiO). He specialized in Indo-Iranian languages. Studies During the years 1923 to 1971, Morgens ...

, Nuristani has generally been regarded as one of three primary sub-groups of Indo-Iranian (alongside

and Indo-Aryan); * suggestions that Nuristani may instead be a branch of the Indo-Aryan subgroup, due to the evident similarity with

Dardic languages The Dardic languages (also Dardu or Pisaca) or Hindu-Kush Indo-Aryan languages, are a group of several Indo-Aryan languages spoken in northern Pakistan, northwestern India and parts of northeastern Afghanistan. The term "Dardic" is stated to b ...

, and; * it has also been proposed that Nuristani originated within the Iranian sub-group, and was later influenced by an Indo-Aryan language, such as Dardic. The languages are spoken by tribal peoples in an extremely isolated mountainous region of the

, 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

. 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 An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead langu ...

. Many Nuristani people now speak other languages, such as

Dari Dari (, , ), also known as Dari Persian (, ), is the variety of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan. Dari is the term officially recognised and promoted since 1964 by the Afghan government for the Persian language,Lazard, G.Darī ...

and

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 ...

(two

official language An official language is a language given supreme status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically the term "official language" does not refer to the language used by a people or country, but by its government (e.g. judiciary, ...

s of Afghanistan) and Chitrali in Pakistan.

Proto-Nuristani

The earliest divergence of Nuristani from the other Indo-Iranian languages may be indicated by the fact that the

Ruki sound law The ruki sound law, also known as the ruki rule or iurk rule, is a historical sound change that took place in the satem branches of the Indo-European language family, namely in Balto-Slavic, Armenian, and Indo-Iranian. According to this sound l ...

does not apply after *u: e.g. Kam-viri 'mouse'. Nuristani shares with Iranian the merger of the tenuis and breathy-voiced consonants, 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 to as in Indo-Aryan. Later on *dz did shift to in all Nuristani varieties other than Kam-viri and Tregami. Many Nuristani languages have subject–object–verb (SOV) word order, like most of the other Indo-Iranian languages, and unlike the adjacent Dardic

Kashmiri language Kashmiri () or Koshur (, /kəːʃur/) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by around 7 million Kashmiris of the Kashmir region, primarily in the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. In 2020, the Parliament of India passed a bill to ma ...

, which has verb-second word order.

References

Bibliography

* Decker, Kendall D. (1992) ''Languages of Chitral.'' Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan, 5. Islamabad: National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University and Summer Institute of Linguistics. * Grjunberg, A. L. (1971): ''K dialektologii dardskich jazykov (glangali i zemiaki). Indijskaja i iranskaja filologija: Voprosy dialektologii.'' Moscow. * Morgenstierne, Georg (1926) Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan. Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, Serie C I-2. Oslo. * Jettmar, Karl (1985) Religions of the Hindu Kush * J. P. Mallory, ''In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth'', Thames and Hudson, 1989. * James P. Mallory & Douglas Q. Adams, "Indo-Iranian Languages", ''

Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...

'', Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997. * Strand, Richard F.
NURESTÂNI LANGUAGES
in Encyclopædia Iranica

External links