| Torwali | |
|---|---|
| توروالی | |
 Torwali written inPerso-Arabic inNastaliq style. | |
| Region | Swat District |
| Ethnicity | Torwali people |
Native speakers | 130,000 (2020)[1] |
| Arabic script (primarilyNastaliq) | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | trw |
| Glottolog | torw1241 |
| ELP | Torwali |
 Torwali is a minor language of Pakistan which is mainly spoken by Torwali nation of CentralSwat District, it is given a space in this map. | |
Torwali (Torwali:توروالی),[2] also known as Bahrain Kohistani,[3] is anIndo-Aryan language spoken by theTorwali people, and concentrated in theBahrain and Chail areas in theSwat Kohistan region of theSwat District innorthern Pakistan.[4][5][6][7] The Torwali language is said to have originated from the pre-Muslim communities of Swat.[8] It is the closest modernIndo-Aryan language still spoken today toNiya, a dialect ofGāndhārī, aMiddle Indo-Aryan language spoken in the ancient region ofGandhara.[9][10] Torwali andGawri languages are collectively classified as "Swat Kohistani".[11]
The words "Kohistan" and Kohistani are genericterms. Kohistan in Persian and in Urdu means as "land of mountains" whereas "Kohistani" refers to 'language spoken in the land mountains" or 'people of the mountains.[12] Joan Baart is the only author who used the term "Bahrain Kohistani" for the Torwali language. Ethnologue, twenty seventh edition suggests Kohistani, Torwalak, Torwalik and Turvali as alternative names for the language while Torwali as an autonym for it.[2]
Torwali is anendangered language: it is characterised as "vulnerable" by theCatalogue of Endangered Languages.[13] There have been efforts to revitalise the language since 2004, and mother tongue community schools have been established by Idara Baraye Taleem wa Taraqi (Institute for Education and Development) (IBT).[14]
Although descriptions of Torwali phonology have appeared in the literature, some questions still remain unanswered.[15][16]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | iiː | uuː | |
| Mid | eeː | ooː | |
| Open | aaː |
Edelman's analysis, which was based on Grierson and Morgenstierne, shows nasal counterparts to at least/eoa/ and also found a series of central (reduced?) vowels, transcribed as:⟨ä⟩,⟨ü⟩,⟨ö⟩.[15]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | iĩ | (ɨ̙) | uũ |
| Mid | eẽ(e̙) | ə(ə̙) | oõ |
| Open | ææ̃ | aã |
Lunsford had some difficulty determining vowel phonemes and suggested there may be retracted vowels with limited distribution:/ɨ/ (which may be[i̙]),/e̙/,/ə̙/.[16] Retracted or retroflex vowels are also found inKalash-mondr.[17]
The phonemic status of the breathy voiced series is debatable.
Sounds with particularly uncertain status are marked with a superscript question mark.
| Labial | Coronal | Retroflex | Post-alv./ Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | (ɳ) | ŋ | ||||||||
| Stop | p pʰ | b bʱ | t tʰ | d dʱ | ʈ ʈʰ | ɖ ɖʱ | k kʰ | g ɡʱ | ||||
| Affricate | ts | ʈʂ ʈʂʰ | ɖʐ | tʃ tʃʰ | dʒ | |||||||
| Fricative (Lateral) | s | z | ʂ | ʐ | ʃ | ʒ | x | ɣ | h | |||
| (t)ɬ? | ||||||||||||
| Approximant (Lateral) | j | w | ||||||||||
| l | ||||||||||||
| Rhotic | r | ɽ? | ||||||||||
The Torwali language does not have a fixed orthography. The existing and widely used Torwali Character set was proposed by Inam Ullah, who proposed representations for unique sounds in Torwali language which later received official designations from theUnicode with the support ofUniversity of Chicago in 2005.[18]
TheTorwali orthography was developed by Idara Baraye Taleem wa Taraqi (IBT) i.e. institute for education and development from 2005-2008 wherein text books for children were developed along with the Alphabet book and primer in Torwali under the Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education program by the abovementioned organisation.[19]
The Torwali alphabet has 46 letters. It uses all 39 letters of theUrdu alphabet plus 7 additional letters.There are 16 aspirated consonants in Torwali represented by digraphs with the letterھ:
There is also another digraph,نگ, (transliterated inLatin script asng), and it represents the sound/ŋ/.The letterے is used for the/e/ sound, and can also appear at the middle of a word, unlike in Urdu where it appears only at the end of a word. The letters ځ[dubious –discuss] and ݨ are used in Pashto loanwords (ݨ for Pashtoڼ), while the lettersث, ح, ذ, ز, ص, ض, ط, ظ, ع, ف andق are only used in loanwords fromUrdu,Arabic andPersian.[20]Torwali also uses the letterٲ for the/æ/ sound, at the beginning, middle or end of word, and is transliteratedæ in Latin script. This letter is not part of the Alphabetical order.The letterا can represent both/a/ (also represented by zabar / fatha َ) or/ə/.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) The Pathans call them, and all other Muhammadans of Indian descent in the Hindu Kush valleys, Kohistanis.... It might be going too far to say that Torwali is the direct lineal descendant of the Niya Prakrit, but there is no doubt that out of all the modern languages it shows the closest resemblance to it. A glance at the map in the Linguistic Survey of India shows that the area at present covered by "Kohistani" is the nearest to that area round Peshawar, where, as stated above, there is most reason to believe was the original home of the Niya Prakrit. That conclusion, which was reached for other reasons, is thus confirmed by the distribution of the modern dialects.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)An online source, the website of IBT where efforts of revitalising the Torwali language can be found along with resources in and about the Torwalilanguage:
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
