Gawar-Bati_language

Gawar-Bati language

Gawar-Bati language

Indo-Aryan language spoken in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Not to be confused with the Gawri language of Kohistan, the Gawari language of India, or the Gawar language of Cameroon.

Gawar-Bati or Narsati is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Kunar, Nari of Eastern Afghanistan, and across the border in Pakistan , It is also known as Kohistani in Kunar. Gawar-Bati has estimated speakers of 75,000. 5,0000 of them are living in ,Kunar,Nari,Afghanistan and 25,000 of them are in Chitral, Pakistan.

Quick Facts Native to, Region ...

Study and classification

The Gawar-Bati language has not been given serious study by linguists, except that it is mentioned by George Morgenstierne (1926) and Kendall Decker (1992).

It is classified as an Indo-Aryan language of the Dardic subgroup. However, the term Dardic is not linguistic but merely geographic.[2]

Phonology

The following tables set out the phonology of the Gawar-Bati language:[3]

Vowels

More information Front, Central ...

The status of short /e/ and /o/ is unclear.

Consonants

A breathy voiced series, /bʱ dʱ gʱ/, existed recently in older speakers—and may still do so.

More information Labial, Coronal ...

Orthography

It is rarely written. This alphabet is used in Pakistan:[4]

More information Letter, Transliteration ...

Notes and references

  1. [1]
    Gawar-Bati at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. [2]
    Bashir, Elena (2007). Jain, Danesh; Cardona, George (eds.). The Indo-Aryan languages. Routledge. 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.
  3. [3]
    Edelman, D. I. (1983). The Dardic and Nuristani Languages. Moscow: Institut vostokovedenii︠a︡ (Akademii︠a︡ nauk SSSR). p. 139.
  4. [4]
    Gawarbati Alif Be fli-online.org

Further reading

35°19′38″N 71°35′05″E
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