Brahui language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Brahui
براوی
Bráhuí
Spoken in Balochistan
Native speakers 2.2 million  (1998)
Language family
Writing system Perso-Arabic, Latin
Official status
Regulated by Brahui Language Board (Pakistan)
Language codes
ISO 639-3 brh
Dravidische Sprachen.png
The Dravidian languages
Brahui (at far upper left) is quite geographically isolated from the other Dravidian languages[1]

Brahui (Urdu: براہوی) or Brahvi (براوی) is a Dravidian language spoken by Brahui people of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, and Iran. It is isolated from the nearest Dravidian-speaking neighbour population by a distance of more than 1,500 kilometres (930 mi).[1]

Contents

[edit] Distribution

Brahui is spoken in the southwest region of Pakistan, as well as regions of Afghanistan and Iran which border Pakistan; however, many members of the ethnic group no longer speak Brahui.[1] The 2005 edition of Ethnologue reports that there are some 2.2 million speakers; 90% of those live in Pakistan, mainly in the region of Balochistan.[2]

[edit] Classification

Brahui belongs, with Kurukh (Oraon) and Malto, to the northern subfamily of the Dravidian family of languages. It has been influenced by the Iranian languages spoken in the area, especially Balochi.[3][page needed]

Brahui language is seen as a recent migrant language to its present region. Scholars accept that Brahui could only have migrated to Balochistan from central India after 1000 CE. The absence of any older Iranian (Avestan) loanwords in Brahui supports this hypothesis. The main Iranian contributor to Brahui vocabulary, Balochi, is a Northwestern Iranian language, and moved to the area from the west only around 1000 CE.[4] One scholar places the migration аs late as the 13th or 14th century.[5][page needed] However, a few scholars have hypothesised that Brahui is a remnant of a formerly widespread Dravidian language family that is believed to have been reduced or replaced during the influx of Iranian/Indo-Aryan languages upon their arrival in South Asia.

[edit] Dialects

Kalat, Jhalawan, and Sarawan, with Kalat as the standard dialect.[2]

[edit] Orthography

Brahui is the only Dravidian language which has not been written in a Brahmi-based script in the recent past; instead, it is written in the Arabic script. More recently, a Roman-based orthography named Brolikva which is short form of Brahui Roman Likvar has been developed by the Brahui Language Board of the University of Balochistan in Quetta. and adopted by Talár Talar.

Below is the new promoted Bráhuí Báşágal Brolikva orthography:[6]

b á p í s y ş v x e z ź ģ f ú m n l g c t ŧ r ŕ d o đ h j k a i u ń ļ

[edit] Basic words and phrases

From Bashir 2003:

  • one - asiŧ
  • two - iraŧ
  • three - musiŧ
  • what - anth

[edit] Endangerment

According to a 2009 UNESCO report, Brahui is one of the 27 languages of Pakistan that are facing the danger of extinction. They classify it in "unsafe" status, the least endangered level out of the five levels of concern (Unsafe, Definitely Endangered, Severely Endangered, Critically Endangered, and Extinct).[7]

[edit] Publications

Haftaí Talár recently became the first ever daily newspaper in Brahui language. It uses the new Roman orthography, and is "an attempt to standardize and develop Brahui language to meet the requirements of modern political, social and scientific discourse."[8]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c Parkin 1989, p. 37
  2. ^ a b Lewis 2009
  3. ^ Emeneau 1962
  4. ^ Witzel 1998, p. 1, which cites Elfenbein 1987
  5. ^ Sergent 1997
  6. ^ Bráhuí Báşágal, Quetta: Brahui Language Board, University of Balochistan, April 2009, https://sites.google.com/site/brahuilb/home, retrieved 2010-06-29 
  7. ^ Moseley 2009
  8. ^ Haftaí Talár, Talár Publications, http://www.talarpub.tk/, retrieved 2010-06-29 

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Personal tools
Namespaces
Variants
Actions
Navigation
Interaction
Toolbox
Print/export
Languages