Brahui language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Brahui | ||
|---|---|---|
| بروہی | ||
| Spoken in | Balochistan | |
| Total speakers | 2.2 million (2005 Ethnologue Report) | |
| Language family | Dravidian
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| Writing system | Perso-Arabic | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1 | None | |
| ISO 639-2 | – | |
| ISO 639-3 | brh | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Brahui (بروہی) or Brahvi is a language spoken by Brahui people of Pakistan. It is the only Dravidian language autochthonous to a country other than India.
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[edit] Distribution
Brahui is spoken in the southwest region of Pakistan, as well as regions of Afghanistan and Iran which border Pakistan. The 2005 edition of Ethnologue reports that some 2.2 million speakers are in the world and 90% of whom live in Pakistan, where it is mainly spoken in the Kalat region of Balochistan.
[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.[1][page needed]
Brahui is widely suggested to be 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. It has been suggested that Brahui might be a remnant of the language spoken in the Indus Valley Civilisation. Conversely, it has been indicated that the Brahuis could only have migrated to Balochistan from central India after 1000. The absence of any older Iranian (Avestan) loanwords in Brahui support this hypothesis. The main Iranian contributor to Brahui vocabulary, Balochi, is a western Iranian language like Kurdish, and moved to the area from the west only around 1000.[2] One scholar places the migration аs late as the 13th or 14th century.[3][page needed]
[edit] Endangerment
According to a 2009 UNESCO report, Brahui is one of the 27 languages of Pakistan which 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).[4]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Emeneau 1962
- ^ Witzel 1998, p. 1, which cites Elfenbein 1987
- ^ Sergent 1997
- ^ Moseley 2009
[edit] References
- Emeneau, Murray B. (1962), "Bilingualism and structural borrowing", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 106 (5): 430-442, http://www.jstor.org/stable/985488
- Elfenbein, J. H. (1987), "A Periplus of the 'Brahui Problem'", Studia Iranica 16 (2): 215-233, doi:
- Sergent, Bernard (1997), Genèse de l'Inde, Bibliothèque scientifique Payot, ISBN 9782228891165, OCLC 38198091
- Witzel, Michael (February 1998), "The Languages of Harappa", in Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark, Proceedings of the Conference on the Indus Civilisation, Madison, Wisconsin, http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/IndusLang.pdf
- Moseley, Christopher, ed. (2009), Interactive Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, UNESCO, OCLC 435877932, http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg=00206
[edit] External links
- Profile of the Brahui language
- Ethnologue report on the Brahui language
- Partial bibliography of scholarly works on Brahui
- Britannica Brahui language
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