Brahui language

Brahui
براوِ
Bráhuí
Spoken in
Total speakers 2.2 million (2005)[1]
Language family Dravidian
  • Northern
    • Brahui
Writing system Perso-Arabic, Roman
Official status
Official language in None
Regulated by Brahui Language Board (Pakistan)
Language codes
ISO 639-1 None
ISO 639-2 –
ISO 639-3 brh
Linguasphere
A map showing the distribution of the Dravidian languages

Brahui (at far upper-left) is quite geographically isolated from the other Dravidian languages[2]
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Brahui (Urdu:براہوی) or Brahvi (براوِ) is a Dravidian language spoken by Brahui people of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. It is isolated from the nearest Dravidian-speaking neighbour population by a distance of more than 1,500 kilometres (930 mi).[2]

Contents

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, but have shifted to Balochi.[2] The 2005 edition of Ethnologue reports that there are some 2.2 million speakers; 90% of those live in Pakistan, mainly in the Kalat region of Balochistan.[1]

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]

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 Brahui 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.[4] One scholar places the migration аs late as the 13th or 14th century.[5]

Dialects

Kalat, Jharawan, and Sarawan, with Kalat as the standard dialect.[1]

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 has been developed by the Brahui Language Board of the University of Balochistan in Quetta.

Below is the new promoted Bráhuí Báşágal Roman 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 ð h j k a i u ń ļ

Basic words and phrases

From Bashir 2003:

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]

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]

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Lewis 2009
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Parkin 1989, p. 37
  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 

References

External links