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Kashmiri language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kashmiri

The word "Koshur" in Sharada script, Perso-Arabic script and Devanagari

script

Pronunciation

[k ]

Native to

Jammu and Kashmir (India)[1]

Azad Jammu and Kashmir(Pakistan)[1]

Region

Northwestern region of theIndian subcontinent

Native speakers

5.6 million (2001)[2]

Language family

Indo-European

Indo-Iranian

Indo-Aryan

Dardic

Dialects

Kashmiri

Kashtawari (standard)
Poguli
Rambani

Writing system

Perso-Arabic script(contemporary),[3]
Devanagari script(contemporary),[3]
Sharada script(ancient/liturgical)[3]
Official status

Official language in

India[1]
Language codes

ISO 639-1

ks

ISO 639-2

kas

ISO 639-3

kas

Glottolog

kash1277

[4]

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols.Without proper rendering

support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbolsinstead
of Unicode characters.

Kashmiri /kmri/[5] (
,
) popularly known as Koshur, is a language from the Dardic subgroup[6] of
the Indo-Aryan languages and it is spoken primarily in the Kashmir Valley, in Jammu and Kashmir.[7][8][9] There are
approximately 5,527,698 speakers throughout India, according to the Census of 2001. [10] Most of the 105,000
speakers in Pakistan are migrs from the Kashmir Valley after the partition of India.[1][11] They include a few
speakers residing in border villages in Neelam District.
Kashmiri is especially close[clarification needed] to the Shina language spoken in Gilgit, Pakistan. Outside the Dardic
group, tonal aspects and loanwords of Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit origin connect Kashmiri to the
neighboring Punjabi language, especially its northern dialects.[12][13]
The Kashmiri language is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India,[14] and is a part of the Sixth Schedule in the
constitution of the Jammu and Kashmir. Along with other regional languages mentioned in the Sixth Schedule, as
well as Hindi and Urdu, the Kashmiri language is to be developed in the state. [15] Most Kashmiri speakers
use Urdu or English as a second language.[1] Since November 2008, the Kashmiri language has been made a
compulsory subject in all schools in the Valley up to the secondary level.[16]
Contents
[hide]

1 Literature
2 Writing system
3 Phonology
o 3.1 Vowels
o 3.2 Consonants

4 Grammar

6 See also

5 Vocabulary
o 5.1 Preservation of old Indo-Aryan vocabulary
o 5.2 First person pronoun
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links

Literature[edit]
In 1919 George Abraham Grierson wrote that Kashmiri is the only one of the Dardic languages that has a
literature. Kashmiri literature dates back to over 750 years, this is, more-or-less, the age of many a modern
literature including modern English.[citation needed]
See also: Kashmiri literature Kashmiri_language_literature

Writing system[edit]
There are three orthographical systems used to write the Kashmiri language: the Sharada script, the Devanagari
script and thePerso-Arabic script. The Roman script is also sometimes informally used to write Kashmiri,
especially online.[3]
The Kashmiri language is traditionally written in the Sharada script after the 8th Century A.D.[17] This script
however, is not in common use today, except for religious ceremonies of the Kashmiri Pandits.[18]
Today it is written in Devanagari script and Perso-Arabic script (with some modifications).[19] Among languages
written in the Perso-Arabic script, Kashmiri is one of the very few which regularly indicates all vowel
sounds.[20] This script has been in vogue since theMuslim conquest in India and has been used by the people for
centuries, in the Kashmir Valley.[21] However, today, the Kashmiri Perso-Arabic script has come to be associated
with Kashmiri Muslims, while the Kashmiri Devanagari script has come to be associated with the Kashmiri Hindu
community.[21][22]

Phonology[edit]
Kashmiri has the following vowel phonemes:[23]

Vowels[edit]
Front Central Back

High

i i

Mid

e e

a a

Low

Consonants[edit]
Labial Dental Alveolar Retroflex

Nasal

Alveolo
Velar Glottal
-palatal

Stop/
Affricate

Fricative

Approximant

p b
p

ts

k g
k

Rhotic

Grammar[edit]
Kashmiri, like German and Old English and unlike other Indo-Aryan
languages, has V2 word order.[24]
There are four cases in Kashmiri: nominative, genitive, and two oblique
cases: the ergative and the dative case.[25]

Vocabulary[edit]
Though Kashmiri has thousands of loan words (mainly from Persian and
Arabic) due to the arrival of Islam in the Valley, however, it remains
basically an Indo-Aryan language close to Rigvedic Sanskrit. There is a
minor difference between the Kashmiri spoken by a Hindu and a Muslim.
For 'fire', a traditional Hindu will use the word agun while a Muslim more
often will use the Arabic word nar. [12][13] Shashishekhar Toshkhani, a
scholar on Kashmir's heritage,[9][26] provides a detailed analysis where he
shows extensive linguistic relationship between the Sanskrit language and
the Kashmiri language, and presents detailed arguments contesting
George Grierson's classification of the Kashmiri language as a member of
the Dardic sub-group (of the Indo-Aryan group of languages). Kashmiri has
strong links to Rigvedic Sanskrit. For example 'cloud' is obur, 'rain'
is ruud (from the Rigvedic Aryan god Rudra).

Preservation of old Indo-Aryan vocabulary[edit]

Kashmiri retains several features of Old Indo-Aryan that have been lost in
other modern Indo-Aryan languages such as Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi and
Sindhi.[27] For instance, it preserves the dvi- form for prefixes in numbers
which is found in Sanskrit, but has been replaced entirely by ba-/bi- in other
Indo-Aryan languages. Seventy-two is dusatath in Kashmiri
and dvisaptati in Sanskrit, but bahattar in Hindi-Urdu and Punjabi.[27] Some
vocabulary features that Kashmiri preserves clearly date from the Vedic
Sanskrit era and had already been lost even in Classical Sanskrit. This
includes the word-form yodvai (meaning if), which is mainly found in Vedic
Sanskrit texts. Classical Sanskrit and modern Indo-Aryan render the word
as yadi.[27] Certain words in Kashmiri even appear to stem from Indo-Aryan
even predating the Vedic period. For instance, there was an /s/ /h/
consonant shift in some words that had already occurred with Vedic
Sanskrit (this tendency is even stronger in the Iranian branch of IndoIranian), yet is lacking in Kashmiri equivalents. The word rahit in Vedic
Sanskrit and modern Hindi-Urdu (meaning excluding or without)
corresponds to rost in Kashmiri. Similarly, sahit (meaning including or with)
corresponds to sost in Kashmiri.[27]

First person pronoun[edit]

Both the Indo-Aryan and Iranian branches of the Indo-Iranian family have
demonstrated a strong tendency to eliminate the distinctive first person
pronoun ("I") used in the nominative (subject) case. The Indo-European
root for this is reconstructed as *eHom, which is preserved in Sanskrit
as aham and in Avestan Persian as azam. This contrasts with the m- form
("me", "my") that is used for the accusative, genitive, dative, ablative cases.
Sanskrit and Avestan both used forms such as ma(-m). However, in
languages such as Modern Persian, Baluchi, Hindi and Punjabi, the distinct
nominative form has been entirely lost and replaced with m- in words such
as ma-n and mai. However, Kashmiri belongs to a relatively small set that
preserves the distinction. 'I' is bi/ba/boh in various Kashmiri dialects,
distinct from the other me terms. 'Mine' is myoon in Kashmiri. Other IndoAryan languages that preserve this feature include Dogri (aun vs me), Gujarati (hu-n vs ma-ri), and Braj (hau-M vs mai-M). The
Iranian Pashto preserves it too (za vs. maa).[28]

See also[edit]
Poetry portal

Dardic languages
List of topics on the land and the people of Jammu and Kashmir
List of Kashmiri poets
States of India by Kashmiri speakers
Kashmiri Wikipedia
Kashmir Valley

References[edit]
1.
2.
3.
4.

5.
6.
7.

8.
9.

10.
11.
12.

13.

^ Jump up to:a b c d e "Kashmiri: A language of India". Ethnologue.

Retrieved 2007-06-02.
Jump up^ Kashmiri at Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013)
^ Jump up to:a b c d Sociolinguistics. Mouton de Gruyter.
Retrieved 2009-08-30.
Jump up^ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarstrm, Harald; Forkel,
Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Kashmiri". Glottolog 2.2.
Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Jump up^ Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student's Handbook,
Edinburgh
Jump up^ "Kashmiri language". Encyclopdia Britannica.
Retrieved 2007-06-02.
Jump up^ "Koshur: An Introduction to Spoken Kashmiri". Kashmir
News Network: Language Section (koshur.org). Retrieved 2007-0602.
Jump up^ "Kashmiri Literature". Kashmir Sabha, Kolkata.
Retrieved 2007-06-02.
^ Jump up to:a b S. S. Toshkhani. "Kashmiri Language: Roots,
Evolution and Affinity". Kashmiri Overseas Association, Inc. (KOA).
Retrieved 2007-06-02.
Jump up^ Abstract of speakers strength of languages and mother
tongues 2001, Census of India (retrieved 17 March 2008)
Jump up^ "The Kashmir Dispute a cause or a symptom?".
Stockholm University. Retrieved2009-07-07.
^ Jump up to:a b Keith Brown, Sarah Ogilvie, Concise encyclopedia of
languages of the world, Elsevier, 2008, ISBN 978-0-08-087774-7, ...
Kashmiri occupies a special position in the Dardic group, being
probably the only dardic language that has a written literature dating
back to the early 13th century ...
^ Jump up to:a b Krishna, Gopi (1967). Kundalini: The Evolutionary
Energy in Man. Boston: Shambhala. p. 212. ISBN 978-1-57062-2809.

14. Jump up^ "Scheduled Languages of India". Central Institute of

Indian Languages. Retrieved2007-06-02.
15. Jump up^ "The Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir (India)".
General Administrative Department of the Government of Jammu &
Kashmir (India). Retrieved 2007-06-02.
16. Jump up^ "Kashmiri made compulsory subject in schools". API
News. Retrieved2007-06-02.[dead link]
17. Jump up^ "Sarada". Lawrence. Retrieved 2007-06-02.
18. Jump up^ "The Sharada Script: Origin and Development". Kashmiri
Overseas Association. Retrieved 2009-07-07.
19. Jump up^ "Kashmiri (

)". Omniglot. Retrieved 2009-07-07.

20. Jump up^ Daniels & Bright (1996). The World's Writing Systems.
pp. 753754.
21. ^ Jump up to:a b "Valley divide impacts Kashmiri, Pandit youth switch
to Devnagari". Indian Express. Retrieved 2009-07-07.
22. Jump up^ "Devnagari Script for Kashmiri: A Study in its Necessity,
Feasibility and Practicality". Kashmiri Overseas Association.
Retrieved 2009-07-07.
23. Jump up^ "Koshur: Spoken Kashmiri: A Language Course:
Transcription". Retrieved 21 May2014.
24. Jump up^ Concerning V2 order in Kashmiri, see Hook (1976:133ff).
25. Jump up^ Edelman (1983). The Dardic and Nuristani Languages.
26. Jump up^ "Dr. Shashishekhar Toshkhani: The Literary Works".
Kashmir News Network. Retrieved 2009-08-21.
27. ^ Jump up to:a b c d K.L. Kalla, The Literary Heritage of Kashmir, Mittal
Publications, ... Kashmiri alone of all the modern Indian languages
preserves the dvi (Kashmiri du) of Sanskrit, in numbers such as
dusatath (Sanskrit dvisaptati), dunamat (Sanskrit dvanavatih) ... the
latter (Yodvai) is archaic and is to be come across mainly in the
Vedas ...
28. Jump up^ John D. Bengtson, Harold Crane Fleming, In hot pursuit of
language in prehistory: essays in the four fields of anthropology, John
Benjamins Publishing Company, 2008,ISBN 978-90-272-3252-6, ...
However, Gujarati as well as a Dardic language like Kashmiri still
preserve the root alternation between subject and non-subject forms
(but they replaced the derivative of the Sanskrit subject form ahm by
new forms) ...

Further reading[edit]

Chapter on Indo-Persian Literature in Kashmir in "The Rise, Growth

And Decline Of Indo-Persian Literature" by R. M. Chopra, 2012,
published by Iran Culture House, New Delhi. 2nd Edition 2013.
Koul,Omkar N & Kashi Wali Modern Kashmiri Grammar Hyattsville,
Dunwoody Press, 2006.

External links[edit]
Kashmiri
edition ofWikipedia, the
free encyclopedia

Modern Kashmiri Dictionary: Android based electronic Kashmiri

Dictionary
Grierson, George Abraham. A Dictionary of the Kashmiri
Language. Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1932.
Hook, Peter E.. 1976. Is Kashmiri an SVO language? Indian
Linguistics 37: 133-142.

Lexical Borrowings in Kashmiri by Ashok K Koul Delhi: Indian Institute

of Language Studies,2008.
Koul, Omkar. Kashmiri: A grammatical sketch
Koshur: An Introduction to Spoken Kashmiri
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