Kalasha should not be confused with the nearbyNuristani Kalasha (known as "Kalasha-ala" or "Waigali"), which is aNuristani language. According to Badshah Munir Bukhari, a researcher on the Kalash, "Kalasha" is also the ethnic name for theNuristani inhabitants of a region southwest of the Kalasha Valleys, in theWaygal and middlePech Valleys of Afghanistan'sNuristan Province. The name "Kalasha" seems to have been adopted for the Kalash people by the Kalasha speakers of Chitral from the Nuristanis of Waygal, who for a time expanded up to southern Chitral several centuries ago.[6] However, there is no close connection between the Indo-Aryan language Kalasha-mun (Kalasha) and the Nuristani language Kalasha-ala (Waigali), which descend from different branches of theIndo-Iranian languages.
Kalasha, alongsideKhowar, retain some archaic features of the Indo-Aryan languages, such as archaic Vedic Sanskrit vocabulary, sibilants, and several types of consonant clusters long lost in others.
Early scholars to have done work on Kalasha include the 19th-century orientalistGottlieb Wilhelm Leitner and the 20th-century linguistGeorg Morgenstierne. More recently, studies have been undertaken byElena Bashir and several others. The development of practical literacy materials has been associated with the Kalasha linguistTaj Khan Kalash. The Southern Kalash or Urtsun Kalash shifted to a Khowar-influenced dialect of Kalasha-mun in the 20th century calledUrtsuniwar.
Of all the languages inPakistan, Kalasha is likely the most conservative, along with the nearby languageKhowar.[7] In a few cases, Kalasha is even more conservative than Khowar, e.g. in retaining voiced aspirate consonants, which have disappeared from most other Dardic languages.
Some of the typical retentions of sounds and clusters (and meanings) are seen in the following list. However, note some common New Indo-Aryan and Dardic features as well.[8]
The Kalasha language is phonologically atypical because it contrasts plain,long,nasal andretroflex vowels as well as combinations of these (Heegård & Mørch 2004). Set out below is the phonology of Kalasha:[9][5]
As with other Dardic languages, the phonemic status of the breathy voiced series is debatable. Some analyses are unsure of whether they are phonemic or allophonic—i.e., the regular pronunciations of clusters of voiced consonants with /h/.[10]
Preservation of intervocalic /m/ (reduced to a nasalized /w/ or /v/ in late MIA elsewhere), e.g. Kal.grom, Kho.gram "village" < OIAgrāma
Non-deletion of intervocalic /t/, preserved as /l/ or /w/ in Kalasha, /r/ in Khowar (deleted in middle MIA elsewhere), e.g. Kho.brār "brother" < OIAbhrātṛ; Kal.ʃau <*ʃal, Kho.ʃor "hundred" < OIAśata
Preservation of the distinction between all three OIA sibilants (dental /s/, palatal /ś/, retroflex /ṣ/); in most of the subcontinent, these three had already merged before 200 BC (early MIA)
Preservation of sibilant + consonant, stop + /r/ clusters (lost by early MIA in most other places):
Preservation of /ts/ in Kalasha (reinterpreted as a single phoneme)
Direct preservation of many OIA case endings as so-called "layer 1" case endings (as opposed to newer "layer 2" case endings, typically tacked onto a layer-1 oblique case):
Dative: Kal.-a, Kho.-a < OIA dative-āya, elsewhere lost already in late OIA
Instrumental: Kal.-an, Kho.-en < OIA-ēna
Ablative: Kal.-au, Kho.-ār < OIA-āt
Locative: Kal.-ai, Kho.-i < OIA-ai
Preservation of more than one verbal conjugation (e.g. Kho.mār-īm "I kill" vs.bri-um "I die")
Preservation of OIA distinction between "primary" (non-past) and "secondary" (past) endings and of a past-tense "augment" in a-, both lost entirely elsewhere: Kal.pim "I drink",apis "I drank";kārim "I do",akāris "I did"
Preservation of a verbal preterite tense (see examples above), with normal nominative/accusative marking and normal verbal agreement, as opposed to theergative-type past tenses with nominal-type agreement elsewhere in NIA (originally based on a participial passive construction)
Bashir, Elena L. (1988).Topics in Kalasha Syntax: An Areal and Typological Perspective. (Ph.D. dissertation) University of Michigan.
Cacopardo, Alberto M.; Cacopardo, Augusto S. (2001).Gates of Peristan: History, Religion, and Society in the Hindu Kush. Rome: Instituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente.
Decker, Kendall D. (1992).Languages of Chitral. Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan. Vol. 5. National Institute of Pakistani Studies. p. 257.ISBN969-8023-15-1.
Fussman, Gerard.Atlas linguistique des parlers dardes et kafirs. Vol. (two volumes). Maps showing distribution of words among people of Kafiristan.
Heegård, Jan; Mørch, Ida Elisabeth (March 2004). "Retroflex vowels and other peculiarities in Kalasha sound system". In Anju Saxena; Jadranka Gvozdanovic (eds.).Synchronic and Diachronic Aspects of Himalayan Linguistics. Selected Proceedings of the 7th Himalayan Languages Symposium held in Uppsala, Sweden. The Hague: Mouton.
Strand, Richard F. (2001). "The Tongues of Peristân". In Alberto M. Cacopardo; Augusto S. Cacopardo (eds.).Gates of Peristan: History, Religion and Society in the Hindu Kush. Rome: Instituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente. pp. 251–259.
Strand, Richard F. (2022). "Phonatory Location in the Far North-Western Indo-Âryan Languages". In Baart, Joan L.G.; Liljegren, Henrik; Payne, Thomas E. (eds.).Languages of Northern Pakistan: Essays in Memory of Carla Radloff. Karachi: Oxford University Press. pp. 446–495.
Trail, Ronald L.; Cooper, Gregory R. (1999).Kalasha dictionary—with English and Urdu. Studies in Languages of Northern Pakistan. Vol. 7. Islamabad: National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University and Summer Institute of Linguistics.ISBN4871875237.
Kochetov, Alexei and Arsenault, Paul and Petersen, Jan Heegård and Kalas, Sikandar and Kalash, Taj Khan (2021). "Kalasha (Bumburet variety)". Illustrations of the IPA.Journal of the International Phonetic Association.51 (3):468–489.doi:10.1017/S0025100319000367{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link), with supplementary sound recordings.
