सिंधु के गीत
linguistic lineage
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The songs we sing:
dOgRI - aN INDO ARYAN LANGUAGE
Short description:
A fascinating language of strong Sanskrit origins written in Devanagari, Nastaliq and ... Takri?! Find out about the historical and linguistic origins of this language mentioned as far back by Khusrau in his 1318 eulogy of India.
Besides being spoken predominantly in the Jammu region of India, Dogri is also used in Pakistan within the obscure region of Shakargarh Tehsil - the only district of Gurdaspur awarded to India, perhaps explaining the language's relatively isolated usage in Pakistan
Linguistic features:
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Like Bengali, v is often changed to b (Vedana > Bedana)
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Unlike dropping the last vowel from its Sanskrit origins like Hindi (Mahabharata > Mahabharat), Dogri drops the first vowel! (Anartha > Nartha)
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There is a prominent use of passive voice ('mere sa nei janoda', like the passive Bengali 'ami jani na')
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Dogri derives from 'Doggar' or ɖυggər, refering to the country between Lahore and Kashmir or a region that is "of difficult traverse”, “invincible” or “difficult to be subdued”.
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One of the first mentions of the language and its people is found in Amir Khusrau's famous Masnawai called Nuh Siphir "the Nine Skies", in which he movingly eulogises the beauty of India through the lines "O Sindhi O Lahori O Doggar".
Written form - transcribed in devanagari, nastalique and Taqri; Most of us being well-acquainted with the former two, what exactly is Takri and what does it look like? Being an abuguida just like Devanagari (that is, using diacritical markings instead of vowels), this mysterious script came into usage during the reign of Maharaja Ranbir Singh, during which Dogri was the official language of Jammu and Kashmir before being replaced by Urdu.
Dhatki
Short description: Also known as Thari (hence explaining its usage in the desert of Tharparker), Dhatki closely resembles neighboring Marwari and Sindhi, but finds itself increasingly sidelined through the influence of Urdu, English and Sindhi within the region.
Linguistic Features:
The Nastalique variant used for Dhatki includes a variety of fascinating letters that do not feature in Urdu, and thus allow for a diverse range of sounds. This includes a گ with two dots on the top that makes a ŋ sound (as in the nasal ng of 'sing'), as well as a ر with four dots that creates a retroflexive, fluttery r sound. What can only wonder what phonetic diversity is lost using the standardized version of Urdu (which falls 25 letters short)!
Written form: besides nastalique and devanagari, Dhatki uses Mahahani - closely ressembling the ancient Kaithi script.
Shina
Short Description: Shina is unique in several ways, being one of the only Dardic Indo-Iranian language to retain many archaic features from Vedic Sanskrit, while its neighbours Khowar and Kalasha have changed more markedly through contact with Indo-Aryan languages.
Language family: Indo-Iranian, Dardic
Linguistic Features:
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The Dardic sub-family of Indo-Aryan languages is so ancient that the Dards are said to have been mentioned by Herodotus and spoken of in the Sanskrit Puranas, with many Greek and Roman writers refer to them as the inhabitants of modern-day Chitral.
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Shina includes some words of Tibetan origin! (Owing to its proximity to East Asia). These include biu meaning 'son', lan meaning 'answer' and dugsmi meaning 'servants'.
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Shina similarly uses honorific pronouns just like Hindi and Urdu. For example, the formal Tu bojé (thou goest) compared to the informal Tsuh bojyat (you go) [in the Gilgiti dialect]
Brahui
How did a Dravidian language spoken in the far south of India find its way to a small corner in the west of Pakistan, isolated among its Indo-Iranian neignbours? A language more akin to Tamil and Kannada than Balochi or Sindhi?
Short Description: Practically non-existent in written form, spurned from education institutions and denied the right of official status, Brahui speakers number only 1,560,000 today compared with 2 million at the beginning of the century.
Known as 'the Brahui problem', the strange geographical displacement of the language (from Afghanistan and Persia to Soviet Turkmenistan) may be explained by the nomadism of the Brahui tribes that existed as far back as the 17th century, and who may have migrated north-westward from the Deccan towards the Kalat region (modern-day Balochistan) either before the 10th century or after the Partition.
Language family: Dravidian (!)
Written form: Nastaliq
Interesting Linguistic features:
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It is endlessly fascinating to observe how Brahui has preserved its Dravidian roots even while being surrounded by its Indo-Iranian neighbours. Note how water in Brahui - 'dir' (دیر) is closer to the Tamil 'tannir' (தண்ணீர்) than the Sindhi 'pani' (پاڻي). Notice also how the digit 2 in Brahui is 'irat' (اِرٹ) just like the Tamil 'irantu' (இரண்டு) unlike the Sindhi 'ba' (ٻه).
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Etymologically, 'Brahui' derives from the Jatki 'Braho', meaning 'Ebrahim' or 'Abraham', thus distinguishing the Muslim creed of the tribe compared to their Jat Hindu neighbours.
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Brahui speakers are given the enigmatic epithet of being "bilaterally bilingual" - meaning that every Brahui speaker almost certainly also speaks Balochi, though the two be linguistically disparate. Lamentably, however, Baluchi is used in more formal situations while Brahui may be perceived as too familiar, or in certain cases, disrespectful. Both languages are still subordinated to Urdu (as every regional tongue).
Khowar
Short Description: Also known as Chitrali by its inhabitants, Khowar is an Indo-Aryan language of the Dardic family that includes some peculiar linguistic features compared to its Dardic neighbors Shina and Kashmiri
Language family: Dardic
Fascinating linguistic features:
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A considerable amount of Khowar's vocabulary is sharply distinct from other Dardic tongues, including its use of ju to refer to 'two' compared with the Gilgiti and Gurezi dú, as well as the word lesha for 'cow' where most Kafir and Dard groups say guo and go
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Interestingly, Khowar does not have any plural distinctions for nouns except when referring to animate objects! This means that while daq (boy) changes to daqan to refer to 'many boys', the plural form for a word like 'bricks' (ushtu) remains the same in the singular - ushtu (brick).
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Unlike Hindi-Urdu and many neighbouring languages, Khowar has no grammatical gender or agreement! This means that while in Hindi we would say 'aurat aa rahi hai' for a woman but 'larka aa raha hai' for a man, in Khowar the verbs remain the same - kimeri ɡojan (the woman is coming), mosh gojan (the man is coming).
kashmiri
Short Description: As one of the oldest languages of the Indus, Kashmiri has one of the richest literary and folkloric traditions, and a celebrated legacy of poems and proverbs.
Interesting historical and linguistic features:
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Like Hindustani, Kashmiri is also divided between the Persian and Devanagari script, with the latter containing fewer Sanskritic borrowings than the former. Interestingly however, Kashmiri is also written in another script called Sharada dating back to the 8th Century (possibly older than Devanagari itself)!
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Kashmiri's old roots can be attested by the mention of three Kashmiri words in Kalhana's famous epic poem Rajatarangini composed in 1158, which recounts the dynasties of of the Kashmiri Empire.
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The first poetry composed in Kashmiri is said to have been written by a mystic Shivite woman called Lal Ded. Like Lady Godiva, she is said to have roamed the valleys naked, claiming that "He only was a man, who feared God", and devoted herself to the veneration of Lord Shiva.
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Rev. J. Hinton Knowles refers to Kashmir as "a land of proverbs", renounced for its folk wisdom infused into common speech and known to all at home.
We have listed some of the most beautiful of these below (from Rev. J. Hinton Knowles's dictionary of Kashmiri proverbs):
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Krayih khutah ehhuh insáf (Justice is better than worship)
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Asav ne, te lasav kith paeth (If we don’t laugh, how will we live?)
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Anigatih guli àlawuni (to show affection in the darkness, i.e; be kind to the unthankful)
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Aib panun mashók (a man loves his own faults)
Seraiki
Short Description: An enigmatic intermediate between Sindhi and Punjabi, Seraiki shares several interesting features with both languages, being spoken as far across the South in Sindh all the way up north to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Fraught for centuries with several identity disputes, Seraiki finds itself caught between conflicting designations and obscured by supressed linguistic surveys.
Language family: Indo-Aryan, Lahnda
(Lahnda generally denotes the variety of Punjabi spoken in the West of Punjab, including several sub-dialects such as Multani, Hindko, and Jatki, and is only very loosely distinguishable from East Punjabi)
Linguistic features + historical insights:
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Also known as the "Up-country language" and "Seraiki Hindki", the Seraiki etymology derived from the word "Siro", meaning "language of the North" or "Upper Sindh", roughly denoting the region where it is spoken today.
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Although Seraiki is more mutually intelligible with Punjabi than Sindhi and shares more vocabulary with the former, it is similar to Sindhi in that it retains a phonetic feature known as "implosive consonants" (that rough b' sound when Hindi speakers say Bombay) as well as aspirates (that strong gust of air when uttering gh or bh) unlike Punjabi which largely dispenses with them.
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The Seraiki movement: having struggled for years to earn the status of linguistic autonomy, Seraiki was only officially recognised as an independent language as lately as the 80's, when the Seraiki movement began to come into force. Since then and even till today, Seraiki speakers are still advocating for increased political and ethnic recognition, being increasingly sidelined by its neighbours Multani and Mujahir.
Balti
Short Description: As the only Tibetan language spoken in Pakistan today, Balti has a fascinating history of switching a plethora of different writing systems, and retains several lost features of Old Tibetan
Language family: Tibetan
Script: Written in 5 scripts - Nastaliq, Devanagari, Balti A, Balti B, and the ever so elegant Tibetan script.
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7th Century - Tibetan script
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14th Century - Islamic invasions brings Persian script to prominence
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15th Century - the use of the now-extinct Balti A script, known for its interesting use of dots above letters to mark word spaces.
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1958 - the (very limited) use of the mysterious Balti B script, created by a man of the name Farhat, whose grandson used the script - mainly used for private correspondence - to write the 'Story of the Creation of Shigar', a history encompassing Shigar valley across 25 generations
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1970s - efforts to devise a Devanagari alphabet suitable for transcribing Balti
Linguistic features:
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Retains sounds of Old Tibetan (7th - 12th century), and thus representing, in the words of Grierson, "a more ancient stage of phonetic development". It therefore contains several more compound consonants than Tibetan itself!
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Balti makes a marked use of suffixes that signify the function of words in a sentence. For instance, chan is used to mark possession, as in the phrase an-chan - 'to have power', or more literally 'power-having'.
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Balti also makes use of the Old Terminative case commonly used in Turkic, Hungarian and Estonian languages to mark space and time through the suffix "u" as in thur-u (down)