Kashmiri

Kashmiri (कॉशुर, کأشُر Koshur) is a language from the Dardic sub-group[3] of the Indo-Aryan group of languages and it is spoken primarily in the Kashmir Valley, in Jammu and Kashmir.[4][5][6] There are approximately 5,554,496 speakers in Jammu and Kashmir, according to the Census of 2001.[7] Most of the 105,000 speakers or so in Pakistan are émigrés from the Kashmir Valley after the partition of India.[8] They include a few speakers residing in border villages in Neelum District.

The Kashmiri language is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India,[9] and is a part of the Sixth Schedule in the constitution of the Jammu and Kashmir. Along with other regional languages mentioned in the Sixth Schedule, as well as Hindi and Urdu, the Kashmiri language is to be developed in the state.[10] Some Kashmiri speakers frequently use Hindi or English as a second language, though the most frequently used second language is Urdu.[1] Since November 2008, the Kashmiri language has been made a compulsory subject in all schools in the Valley up to the secondary level.[11]


There are three orthographical systems used to write the Kashmiri language—these are the Sharada script, the Devanagari script and the Perso-Arabic script; additionally, due to internet technology, the Roman script is sometimes used to write Kashmiri, especially online.[2] The Kashmiri language was traditionally written in the Sharada script after the 8th Century A.D.[13] This script however, is not in common use today, except for religious ceremonies of the Kashmiri Pandits.[14] However, today, it is written in Devanagari script and Perso-Arabic script (with some modifications).[15] Among languages written in the Perso-Arabic script, Kashmiri is one of the very few which regularly indicates all vowel sounds.[16] This script has been in vogue since the Muslim conquest in India and has been used by the people for centuries, in the Kashmir Valley.[17] However, today, the Kashmiri Perso-Arabic script has come to be associated with Kashmiri Muslims, while the Kashmiri Devanagari script, has come to be associated with the Kashmiri Hindu community, who employ the latter script.[17][18] Recently, a new font NarQalam was developed and copyrighted by Muzaffar Aazim, a well known Kashmiri writer and poet.
[edit] Grammar

Kashmiri, like German and Old English and unlike other Indo-Aryan languages, has V2 word order.[19]

There are four cases in Kashmiri: nominative, genitive, and two oblique cases: the ergative and the dative case.[20]
[edit] Vocabulary

Kashmiri draws on a large mixed vocabulary of Dardic, Sanskrit, Punjabi, Hindi-Urdu, Persian and Arabic origin.[21] Kashmiri is extensively borrows Dari Persian words, much as is the case with Hindi-Urdu and other languages of the region.[22] In reference,[6] Shashishekhar Toshkhani, a scholar on Kashmir's heritage,[23] provides a detailed analysis where he shows extensive linguistic relationship between the Sanskrit language and the Kashmiri language, and presents detailed arguments contesting George Grierson's classification of the Kashmiri language as a member of the Dardic sub-group (of the Indo-Aryan group of languages).
[edit] Preservation of old Indo-Aryan vocabulary

Kashmiri retains several features of Old Indo-Aryan that have been lost in other Modern Indo-Aryan languages such as Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi and Sindhi.[24] For instance, it preserves the dvi- form for prefixes in numbers which is found in Sanskrit, but has been replaced entirely by ba-/bi- in other Indo-Aryan languages. Seventy-two is dusatath in Kashmiri and dvisaptati in Sanskrit, but bahattar in Hindi-Urdu and Punjabi.[24] Some vocabulary features that Kashmiri preserves clearly date from the Vedic Sanskrit era and had already been lost even in Classical Sanskrit. This includes the word-form yodvai (meaning if), which is mainly found only in Vedic Sanskrit texts. Classical Sanskrit and modern Indo-Aryan render the word as yadi.[24] Certain words in Kashmiri even appear to stem from Indo-Aryan even predating the Vedic period. For instance, there was a 's' to 'h' consonant shift in some words that had already occurred with Vedic Sanskrit (this tendency is even stronger in the Iranian branch of Indo-Iranian), yet is lacking in Kashmiri equivalents. The word rahit in Vedic Sanskrit and modern Hindi-Urdu (meaning excluding or without) corresponds to rost in Kashmiri. Similarly, sahit (meaning including or with) corresponds to sost in Kashmiri.[24]
[edit] First personal pronoun

Both the Indo-Aryan and Iranian branches of the Indo-Iranian family have demonstrated a strong tendency to eliminate the distinctive first person pronoun ("I") used in the nominative (subject) case. The Indo-European root term for this is believed to be "eghom", which is preserved in Sanskrit as "aham" and in Avestan Persian as "azam." This contrasts with the "m-" form ("me", "my") that is used for the accusative, genitive, dative, ablative cases. Sanskrit and Avestan both used forms such as "ma(-m)." However, in languages such as Modern Persian, Baluchi, Hindi-Urdu and Punjabi, the distinct nominative form has been entirely lost and replaced with "m-" in words such as "ma-n" and "mai." However, Kashmiri belongs to a relatively small set that preserves the distinction. "I" is "bi/ba/boh" in various Kashmiri dialects, distinct from the other "me" terms. Other Indo-Aryan languages that preserve this feature are Dogri ("aun" vs "me-") and Gujarati ("hu-n" vs "ma-ri"). Pashto preserves it too ("za" vs "maa").[25]
[edit] See also
Quill and ink.svg Poetry portal

* Dardic languages
* Kashmiri literature
* List of topics on the land and the people of “Jammu and Kashmir”
* List of Kashmiri poets
* Neab International Kashmiri Magazine
* States of India by Kashmiri speakers