Dameli language
Dameli (دَميلي), also Damia, Damiabaasha or Gidoj,[2] is an Indo-Aryan language of the Dardic subgroup spoken by approximately 5,000 people in the Domel Town, in the Chitral District of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.
| Dameli | |
|---|---|
| Dāmya bāṣa | |
| Native to | Pakistan |
| Region | Khyber Pakhtunkhwa |
| Ethnicity | Damia |
Native speakers | 5,000 (2001)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | dml |
| Glottolog | dame1241 |
| ELP | Dameli |
The Domel or Damel Valley is about ten miles south of Drosh on the East Side of the Chitral or Kunar river, on the road from the Mirkhani Fort to the pass of Arandu.
Dameli is still the main language in the villages where it is spoken, and it is regularly learned by children. Most of the men speak Pashto as a second language, and some also speak Khowar and Urdu, but there are no signs of massive language change.
Study Edit
Emil Perder's 2013 dissertation, A Grammatical Description of Dameli, based on the author's field work, is the first comprehensive description of the Dameli language. Before Perder's work, the main source of information on Dameli was an article by Georg Morgenstierne, published in 1942: "Notes on Dameli: A Kafir-Dardic Language of the Chitral". A sociolinguistic survey written by Kendall Decker (1992) contains a chapter on Dameli.
Classification Edit
The language is classified as an Indo-Aryan language of the Dardic subgroup. The Dardic languages were first thought to be as an independent branch within Indo-Iranian, but today they are placed within Indo-Aryan following Morgenstierne's work.[3]
Phonology Edit
The following tables set out the phonology of the Dameli Language.[4]
Vowels Edit
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| High | i, iː | u |
| Mid | e, eː | oː |
| Low | a | ɑː |
Consonants Edit
See also Edit
References Edit
- ^ Dameli at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ "Languages of Hindukush". University of Chitral. Retrieved 2022-10-16.
- ^ Bashir, Elena (2007). Jain, Danesh; Cardona, George (eds.). The Indo-Aryan languages. p. 905. ISBN 978-0415772945.
'Dardic' is a geographic cover term for those Northwest Indo-Aryan languages which [..] developed new characteristics different from the IA languages of the Indo-Gangetic plain. Although the Dardic and Nuristani (previously 'Kafiri') languages were formerly grouped together, Morgenstierne (1965) has established that the Dardic languages are Indo-Aryan, and that the Nuristani languages constitute a separate subgroup of Indo-Iranian.
- ^ Edelman, D. I. (1983). The Dardic and Nuristani Languages. Moscow: Institut vostokovedenii︠a︡ (Akademii︠a︡ nauk SSSR). p. 129.
Further reading Edit
- Decker, Kendall D. (1992) Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan, 5. Islamabad: National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University and Summer Institute of Linguistics. xxii, 257 p. ISBN 969-8023-15-1.
- Morgenstierne, Georg (1926) Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan. Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, Serie C I-2. Oslo. ISBN 0-923891-09-9.
- Morgenstierne, Georg (1942) "Notes on Dameli. A Kafir-Dardic Language of Chitral." Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap Vol. 12: 115 - 198.
- Perder, Emil (2013) A Grammatical Description of Dameli. Dissertation, Stockholm: Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University. ISBN 9789174477702.
External links Edit
- Georg Morgenstierne multimedia database
- Richard Strand's Nuristan site with relevant material on closely related languages in Afghanistan
- Perder, Emily. A Grammatical Description of Dameli