Brahui language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

Brahui
براوی Bráhuí
Spoken in	Balochistan
Native speakers	2.2 million  (1998)
Language family	Dravidian Northern Brahui
Writing system	Perso-Arabic, Latin
Official status
Regulated by	Brahui Language Board (Pakistan)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	brh
The Dravidian languages Brahui (at far upper left) is quite geographically isolated from the other Dravidian languages[1]

Brahui (Urdu: براہوی) or Brahvi (براوی) is a Dravidian language spoken by Brahui people of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and expatriate communities in Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, and Iran. It is isolated from the nearest Dravidian-speaking neighbour population by a distance of more than 1,500 kilometres (930 mi).^[1]

Distribution[link]

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

Classification[link]

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][page needed]}

Brahui language is seen as a recent migrant language to its present region. Scholars accept that Brahui could only have migrated to Balochistan from central India after 1000 AD. The absence of any older Iranian (Avestan) loanwords in Brahui supports this hypothesis. The main Iranian contributor to Brahui vocabulary, Balochi, is a Northwestern Iranian language, and moved to the area from the west only around 1000 AD.^[4] One scholar places the migration аs late as the 13th or 14th century.^{[5][page needed]} However, a few scholars have hypothesised that Brahui is 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.

Dialects[link]

Kalat, Jhalawan, and Sarawan, with Kalat as the standard dialect.^[2]

Orthography[link]

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 named Brolikva which is short form of Brahui Roman Likvar has been developed by the Brahui Language Board of the University of Balochistan in Quetta. and adopted by Talár Talar.

Below is the new promoted Bráhuí Báşágal Brolikva orthography:^[6]

Basic words and phrases[link]

From Bashir 2003:

• one - asiŧ
• two - iraŧ
• three - musiŧ
• what - anth

Endangerment[link]

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[link]

Haftaí Talár recently became the first ever daily newspaper in Brahui language. It uses the new Latin alphabet, and is "an attempt to standardize and develop Brahui language to meet the requirements of modern political, social and scientific discourse."^[8]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Online Brahui Dictionary. Brahui Dictionary
• Emeneau, Murray B. (1962), "Bilingualism and structural borrowing", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 106 (5): 430–442, JSTOR 985488 
• Elfenbein, J. H. (1987), "A Periplus of the 'Brahui Problem'", Studia Iranica 16 (2): 215–233, DOI:10.2143/SI.16.2.2014604 
• Parkin, Robert (1989), "Some comments on Brahui kinship terminology", Indo-Iranian Journal 32 (1): 37–43, DOI:10.1007/BF00182435 
• Sergent, Bernard (1997), Genèse de l'Inde, Bibliothèque scientifique Payot, ISBN 978-2-228-89116-5, OCLC 38198091 
• Witzel, Michael (February 1998), "The Languages of Harappa", in Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark, Proceedings of the Conference on the Indus Civilisation, Madison, Wisconsin, http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/IndusLang.pdf 
• Bashir, Elena (December 2003), "Brahui - Notes", South Asian Language Resource Center Workshop on Languages of Afghanistan and neighboring areas, http://salrc.uchicago.edu/workshops/sponsored/121203/resources/brahui.pdf, retrieved 2010-06-29 
• Lewis, M. Paul, ed. (2009), "Report for language code: brh", Ethnologue: Languages of the World (16th ed.), Dallas, Texas: SIL International, http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=brh, retrieved 2010-06-23 
• Moseley, Christopher, ed. (2009), Interactive Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, UNESCO, OCLC 435877932, http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg=00206 

External links[link]

Brahui language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

• Brahui Language Board
• Bráhuí Báşágal (Brahui Alphabet)
• Profile of the Brahui language
• Partial bibliography of scholarly works on Brahui
• Britannica Brahui language

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2008)

Brahui
بروہی

A photograph from 1910 with the caption reading "Brahui of Quetta".
Total population
2,528,000 [1]
Regions with significant populations
Pakistan 2,234,000 [2]  Afghanistan 271,000 [3]  Iran 21,000 [4]  Bangladesh 400 [5]
Languages
Brahui Balochi, Urdu and Persian spoken as second languages
Religion
Sunni Islam (Hanafi)
Related ethnic groups
Balochis and Sindhis as well as Indo-Aryans, and Dravidians

The Brahui or Brohi (Brahui: براہوی) (Sindhi: بروہي ) are an ethnic group of about 2.2 million people with the majority found in Kalat, Baluchistan, Pakistan, but they are also found in smaller numbers in neighboring Afghanistan and Iran. The Brahuis are almost entirely Sunni Muslims.^[6]

Origins[link]

The ethnonym "Brahui" is a very old term and a purely Dravidian one.^[7] The fact that other Dravidian languages only exist further south in India has led to several speculations about the origins of the Brahui. There are three hypotheses regarding the Brahui that have been proposed by academics. One theory is that the Brahui are a relic population of Dravidians, surrounded by speakers of Indo-Iranian languages, remaining from a time when Dravidian was more widespread. Another theory is that they migrated to Baluchistan from inner India during the early Muslim period of the 13th or 14th centuries.^[8] A third theory says the Brahui migrated to Balochistan from South India after 1000 AD. The absence of any older Iranian (Avestan) influence in Brahui supports this hypothesis. The main Iranian contributor to Brahui vocabulary is a northwestern Iranic language, Baluchi, and southeastern Iranic language, Pashto.^[9]

The History of the Brahui emerges from total darkness with the displacement of a shadowy Hindu dynasty in Kalat called called Sewa by the Mirwari Brahuis. There is a Mughal interlude and then Brahui ascendancy again.^[10]

It is said that a Hindu dynasty, the Sewa by name, ruled over this part of the country prior to the seventh century, Kalat is still known as Kalat-i-Sewa.^[11]

Over the centuries, due to their location, the Brahui have mixed with Iranian peoples as well as the Sindhis, among other Indo-Aryan peoples. They culturally resemble their Baloch and Sindhi neighbors, although they still continue to speak their Brahui language.

Tribes[link]

Brahui tribes include Mengal, Zagar Mengal, Mirwani, Bangulzai, Banulzai, Bizenjo, Khurasani, Kheazai, Langov, Lehri, Sarparah, Muhammed Hasni, Muhammad Shahi, Raisani, Shahwani, Sumulani, Yusufzai (Dehwar) Zarakzai (Zehri),Sasooli, Sataksai, Musiani, Qambarani, Rodeni, Jattak, Badini.^[12]

Language[link]

Dravidian ethnic groups in South Asia.

The Brahui language is a language within the Dravidian subgroup of languages.^[7] While it does contain many similar words as the Iranic Baloch language, it also has many loan words from Indo-Aryan languages as well as the Dravidian words of its own. It is mainly spoken in the Kalat areas of Balochistan, Pakistan, although there are a considerable number of speakers in Southern Afghanistan and Iranian Balochistan. It includes three dialects including Sarawani (spoken in the north), Jhalawani (spoken in the southeast), and Chaghi (spoken in the northwest and west). According to a survey it has about 2,000,000 speakers in Pakistan (1998), 200,000 speakers in Afghanistan^[13] and 20,000 speakers in Iran, which would amount to 2,220,000 in the world. Due to its isolation, Brahui's vocabulary is only 15% Dravidian, while the remainder is dominated by Perso-Arabic, Balochi, and Indo-Aryan, while the grammar and overall morphology still resemble other Dravidian tongues. Brahui is generally written in the Perso-Arabic script and there is even a Latin alphabet that has been developed for use with Brahui.

Dialects[link]

Kalat, Jhalawan, and Sarawan, with Kalat as the standard dialect. Presently Brahui is spoken in Sistan va Baluchestan, Pakistani Balochistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Sindh and the Persian Gulf Arab states.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Brahui

• South Asia Language Resource Center
• Brahui people, Britannica.com