| Wotapuri-Katarqalai | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Afghanistan |
| Region | Watapur District |
| Era | last attested 1983, 3 speakers (2023)[1] |
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | wsv |
| Glottolog | wota1240 |
| ELP | Wotapuri-Katarqalai |
 Wotapuri-Katarqalai is classified as Definitely Endangered by theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger | |
Wotapuri-Katarqalai is anIndo-Aryan language documented to have been spoken inAfghanistan. It is unknown if the language still has active speakers, or is extinct.[2][3] The most recent documentation of its use was published in 1983, when it was proposed that the language was in use inKatar-qala [Wikidata] and unlikely to be extinct inWotapur [nl].[1] In September 2023, there were just 3 senior male speakers (1 in Katar-qala and 2 in Quro) living in the valley reported to Sviatoslav Kaverin who was conducting field research there.
Below is set out the phonology of the Wotapuri-Katarqalai language.[4]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | iiː | uuː | |
| Mid | eeː | ə | ooː |
| Open | aaː |
| Labial | Coronal | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɳ | |||||
| Stop | Plain | p | t | ʈ | k | q | ||
| Aspirated | pʰ[f] | tʰ | ʈʰ | kʰ | ||||
| Voiced | b | d | ɖ | ɡ | ||||
| Affricate | Plain | ts | tʂ | tʃ | ||||
| Aspirated | tsʰ | tʂʰ | tʃʰ | |||||
| Voiced | (dz) | dʒ | ||||||
| Fricative | Plain | s | ʂ | ʃ | x | h | ||
| Voiced | z | |||||||
| Lateral | Plain | l | ||||||
| Fricative | ɬ~l̥ | |||||||
| Rhotic | r | ɽ | ||||||
| Semivowel | j | w | ||||||
Two of the languages on the above list are probably extinct, namelyTirahi, andWot (Wotapuri-Katarqalai). Of the latter we can witness how the process of extinction has moved on inexorably in the course of the twentieth century. In the 1940s Morgenstierne reported that Wot was spoken in two villages in the Katar valley, one at Wotapuri at the confluence of the Pech river with the streams coming from the valley, one further up the valley in Katarqalai. 15 years later Budruss (1960) visited both villages, found no speakers of the language in the lower village,Pashto having completely replaced it, and in the upper one only a few passive speakers who remember having spoken the language in their earlier years.
Aside from the often insurmountable difficulty of organizing linguistic expeditions into these areas, Fussman notes how quickly the Dardic and Kafir languages of Afghanistan have been overwhelmed by the outside world, such that within a few years of Morgenstierne's expedition, Tirahi and Wotapuri, for example, had become dead languages (Fussman 1972: 4).
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