Memoni (, ) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by

Memons The Memon are a Muslim community in Gujarat India, and Sindh, Pakistan, the majority of whom follow the Hanafi fiqh of Sunni Islam. They are divided into different groups based on their origins: Memons (Kathiawar), Kathiawari Memons, Kutchi Me ...

, from the

Kathiawar Kathiawar (), also known as Saurashtra, is a peninsula in the south-western Gujarat state in India, bordering the Arabian Sea and covering about . It is bounded by the Kutch district in the north, the Gulf of Kutch in the northwest, and by the ...

region of

Gujarat Gujarat () is a States of India, state along the Western India, western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the List of states and union territories ...

, India. Memoni is also spoken by some other communities from Kathiawad (Khatri, Kathiwadi) use Memoni as their mother tongue. Memoni is considered as a dialect of Sindhi language by some scholars. The Kathiawari Memons are a sub-group of the Memon people, a Muslim community in India and Pakistan. After the

partition of India The partition of India in 1947 was the division of British India into two independent dominion states, the Dominion of India, Union of India and Dominion of Pakistan. The Union of India is today the Republic of India, and the Dominion of Paki ...

in 1947, Memons of the Kathiawar region migrated to neighboring states, cities and towns within India, but a large number of Memons settled in Pakistan,

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

, Malawi, Kenya, as well as the United States and Canada. Kathiawadi Memon can be divided in to sub group according to their former towns in district Kathiawad of Gujarat, India. Namely; 01. Bantva 02. Kutiyanah 03. Dhoraji 04. Jetpur 05. Gondal 06. Vanthli 07. Veraval 08. Jamnagar 09. Junagadh 10. Porbandar 11. Halari 12. Upleta

History

Memoni language shares vocabulary with Sindhi, Kutchi and Gujarati languages, some scholars consider Memoni to be a dialect of Sindhi language. It has several different dialects and accents due to the influence of other languages in areas of settlement. Haji Mohammed Husein Abdel Kareem Nagani spent 40 years inventing a Memoni alphabet in order to bring the Memoni language up to the standard of other major languages in the world. The Memon community is generally divided into three major subgroups, Kathiawari Memons, who originated in the

region (who speak Memoni), Sindhi Memons (who speak Sindhi) and Kutchi Memons (who speak Kutchi). The Memon people from Kathiawar were Muslims who followed Hanafi Islam. Sindhi and Kutchi are spoken by both

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

and non-Muslims, in contrast to the Memoni language, which is exclusively spoken by Memons of Kathiawar origin, who are entirely Muslims. In grammar, stress, intonation,

Phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...

features and everyday speech, Memoni is very similar to Sindhi or Kutchi, but it borrows vocabulary extensively from Gujarati, Hindustani and

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

. Like most languages of the

Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a physiographic region of Asia below the Himalayas which projects into the Indian Ocean between the Bay of Bengal to the east and the Arabian Sea to the west. It is now divided between Bangladesh, India, and Pakista ...

, the sentence structure of Memoni generally follows subject–object–verb order. Especially in

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

, Memoni language has adopted many

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

words and phrases. Even between different villages of Kathiawar, variations have arisen.

Nouns

Most nouns have a

grammatical gender In linguistics, a grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages wit ...

, either masculine or feminine, and often have singular and plural forms. Vast majorities of

nouns In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an object or subject within a phrase, clause, or sentence.Example n ...

have been borrowed from Hindustani (umbrella term for

and Hindi), and English vocabulary is extensively used.

Example

COMPUTER

Articles and determiner

There is no equivalent for the definite article ''the'', and the indefinite article ''a'' is further inflected as masculine or feminine with its object.

Pronouns

The second person nominative pronoun 'you' is expressed two different ways: the polite form (cognate with in standard Sindhi), generally used for respected strangers, the elderly, parents and older relatives, and the familiar form , used among close friends and when addressing subordinates. The

accusative In grammar, the accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "her", " ...

possessive A possessive or ktetic form (Glossing abbreviation, abbreviated or ; from ; ) is a word or grammatical construction indicating a relationship of possession (linguistics), possession in a broad sense. This can include strict ownership, or a numbe ...

and reflexive pronouns are often

inflected In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

for masculine and feminine and their gender must agree with their referents.

Example

In most Indic languages regarding the third person such as, ''he'', ''she'', ''it'' and ''they'' and the

demonstrative Demonstratives (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic, their meaning ...

pronouns ''this'', ''these'', ''that'', ''those'', the same pronouns are used. They are divided into two categories, one for a near object or person and the other for a far object or person.

Example 2

No significant differences are made among the object,

and reflexive pronouns. In addition these pronouns are further inflected for masculine and feminine and must agree with the object (noun, pronouns, adjective and adverbs).

Verbs

Verbs are generally conjugated according to person, number, tense, aspect, mood and voice. They may also agree with the person gender, and/or number of some of their other arguments, including the object. The verb generally appears at the end of the sentence.

Adjectives

Like English, the position of the adjectives nearly always appears immediately before the noun and they are modified and often inflected for masculine and feminine and must agree with the noun that follows. The proposition generally comes after a noun or a verb.

Script

In the past there have been some attempts to write the Memoni dialect using the Gujarati, and later, Urdu, scripts with little success. Some attempts have been made to write Memoni using the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

References

External links

Reference: {{DEFAULTSORT:Memoni Language Sindhi language Gujarati language Memon Languages of India Languages of Sindh Northwestern Indo-Aryan languages Subject–object–verb languages Languages of Gujarat Dialects of Sindhi