Wasi-wari (Vasi-vari, Wasi-weri) is the language of the

Wasi people Wasi or WASI may refer to: * Al-Wāsiʿ, one of the names of God in Islam, meaning ''The Omnipresent'' * Washi, Osmanabad, a panchayat village in Osmanabad District, Maharashtra, India * Wasi, Sulawesi, a village in Donggala Regency on the island ...

, spoken in a few villages in the Pârun Valley (Prasun Valley) 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 borde ...

. It also goes by the name Prasun or Paruni. Vasi-vari belongs to the

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in h ...

, and is on the Nuristani group of the Indo-Iranian branch. Vasi-vari is the most isolated of the

Nuristani languages 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 groups. They have approximately 130,000 speakers primarily in ea ...

. As far as is known, its speakers are 100%

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

. Literacy rates are low: below 1% for people who have it as a

first language A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother to ...

, and between 15% and 25% for people who have it as a

second language A person's second language, or L2, is a language that is not the native language ( first language or L1) of the speaker, but is learned later. A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a ...

Demographics

Wasi-wari is a language spoken by the Vâs’i people who are located in the Pârun Valley, known as Vâs’i gul, at the beginning of 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 sou ...

Basin in the Nurestân Province of Northeastern Afghanistan. The Vâs’i refer to the language as Vâs’i-vari or Vâs’i-vare, but it is also known as Prasuni, Paruni, Parun, Vasi-vari, Prasun, Veron, Verou, Veruni, Wasi-veri, Wasi-weri, Wasin-veri, Vasi Vari, and Pārūnī. The population of Vâs’i gul is between 3000-6000, and there are approximately 8000 native speakers, which makes it a vulnerable language.

Dialects

Wasi-wari is broken up into three

dialects 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 ...

that are spoken in six villages. The upper dialect, Ṣup'u-vari, is spoken in the northernmost village, Ṣup'u. The central dialect, üšʹüt-üćʹü-zumʹu-vari, is spoken in the middle four villages, S’eć, Üć’ü, Üšʹüt, and Zum’u. The Lower dialect, Uṣ'üt-var’e, is spoken in Uṣ'üt, the lowest village.

Classification

Wasi-wari is part of the Nuristani branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, which has both Iranian and Indo-Aryan influences. Nuristani languages were formerly considered to be

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 t ...

, however, they are dissimilar enough from the other Dardic languages to constitute their own branch of the Indo-Iranian language tree. There was also previously confusion on whether Wasi-wari and Prasun were the same or separate languages, but it was determined that both names referred to the same language. Although it is substantially different from the other Nuristâni languages, Wasi-wari forms the northern cluster of Nuristâni languages with Kâmk’ata-Mumkst’a-vari, so they share some similarities.

Phonology

Vowels

Wasi-wari has eight vowels, â, u, o, i, e, ü, ö, and the unmarked vowel, a, which is pronounced as a high central vowel, � Long vowels are denoted with :, such as :

Pronouns

Numerals

Grierson,G. A. (1919). Specimens of the Dardic or Piśācha languages (including Kāshmīrī). ''Linguistic Survey of India'', 8 (2), 67. Retrieved from: http://dsal.uchicago.edu/books/lsi/lsi.php?volume=8-2&pages=584#page/82/mode/1up

References

External links

Prasuni
at the Endangered Languages Project Languages of Afghanistan Nuristani languages {{ie-lang-stub