Kashmiri
कॉशुर كأشُر kạ̄šur
Spoken in	Jammu and Kashmir (India)[1] Azad Jammu and Kashmir (Pakistan)[1]
Region	Northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent
Native speakers	Over 5.5 million  (2001)
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Dardic Kashmiri
Dialects	Kashtawari (standard) Poguli Rambani
Writing system	Perso-Arabic script (contemporary),[2] Devanagari script (contemporary),[2] Sharada script (ancient/liturgical)[2]
Official status
Official language in	India[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ks
ISO 639-2	kas
ISO 639-3	kas
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Kashmiri (कॉशुर, کأشُر Koshur) is an [Indo-Aryan] language and it is spoken primarily in the Kashmir Valley, in Jammu and Kashmir.^[3][4][5] There are approximately 5,527,698 speakers throughout India, according to the Census of 2001.^[6] Most of the 105,000^{[citation needed]} speakers or so in Pakistan are émigrés from the Kashmir Valley after the partition of India.^[7] They include a few speakers residing in border villages in Neelum District.

The Kashmiri language is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India,^[8] and is a part of the Sixth Schedule in the constitution of the Jammu and Kashmir. Along with other regional languages mentioned in the Sixth Schedule, as well as Hindi and Urdu, the Kashmiri language is to be developed in the state.^[9] Some Kashmiri speakers frequently use Hindi as a second language, though the most frequently used second language is Urdu.^[1] Since November 2008, the Kashmiri language has been made a compulsory subject in all schools in the Valley up to the secondary level.^[10]

Literature[link]

In 1919 George Abraham Grierson wrote that “Kashmiri is the only one of the Dardic languages that has a literature”. Kashmiri literature dates back to over 750 years, this is, more-or-less, the age of many a modern literature including modern English.

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica stated that "The language spoken in Kashmir is akin to that of the Punjab, though marked by many peculiarities. It possesses an ancient literature, which is written in a special character."^[11]

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Writing system[link]

There are three orthographical systems used to write the Kashmiri language—these are the Sharada script, the Devanagari script and the Perso-Arabic script; additionally, due to internet technology, the Roman script is sometimes used to write Kashmiri, especially online.^[2] The Kashmiri language was traditionally written in the Sharada script after the 8th Century A.D.^[12] This script however, is not in common use today, except for religious ceremonies of the Kashmiri Pandits.^[13] However, today, it is written in Devanagari script and Perso-Arabic script (with some modifications).^[14] Among languages written in the Perso-Arabic script, Kashmiri is one of the very few which regularly indicates all vowel sounds.^[15] This script has been in vogue since the Muslim conquest in India and has been used by the people for centuries, in the Kashmir Valley.^[16] However, today, the Kashmiri Perso-Arabic script has come to be associated with Kashmiri Muslims, while the Kashmiri Devanagari script, has come to be associated with the Kashmiri Hindu community, who employ the latter script.^[16][17]

Phonology[link]

Kashmiri has the following vowel phonemes:^[18]

	Front	Central	Back
High	i iː	ɨ ɨː	u uː
Mid	e eː	ə əː	o oː
Low		a aː	ɒ

Grammar[link]

Kashmiri, like German and Old English and unlike other Indo-Aryan languages, has V2 word order.^[19]

There are four cases in Kashmiri: nominative, genitive, and two oblique cases: the ergative and the dative case.^[20]

Vocabulary[link]

Though Kashmiri has thousands of loan words (mainly from Arabic etc.) due to the arrival of Islam in the Vale, however, it remains basically an Indo-Aryan language close to Rigvedic Sanskrit. There is a minor difference between the Kashmiri spoken by a Hindu and a Muslim. For 'fire', a traditional Hindu will use the word agun while a Muslim more often will use the Arabic word nar. ^[21][22] Shashishekhar Toshkhani, a scholar on Kashmir's heritage,^[5][23] provides a detailed analysis where he shows extensive linguistic relationship between the Sanskrit language and the Kashmiri language, and presents detailed arguments contesting George Grierson's classification of the Kashmiri language as a member of the Dardic sub-group (of the Indo-Aryan group of languages). Kashmiri has strong links to Rigvedic Sanskrit. For example 'cloud' is obur, 'rain' is ruud (from the Rigvedic Aryan god Rudra).

Preservation of old Indo-Aryan vocabulary[link]

Kashmiri retains several features of Old Indo-Aryan that have been lost in other modern Indo-Aryan languages such as Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi and Sindhi.^[24] For instance, it preserves the dvi- form for prefixes in numbers which is found in Sanskrit, but has been replaced entirely by ba-/bi- in other Indo-Aryan languages. Seventy-two is dusatath in Kashmiri and dvisaptati in Sanskrit, but bahattar in Hindi-Urdu and Punjabi.^[24] Some vocabulary features that Kashmiri preserves clearly date from the Vedic Sanskrit era and had already been lost even in Classical Sanskrit. This includes the word-form yodvai (meaning if), which is mainly found only^{[clarification needed]} in Vedic Sanskrit texts. Classical Sanskrit and modern Indo-Aryan render the word as yadi.^[24] Certain words in Kashmiri even appear to stem from Indo-Aryan even predating the Vedic period. For instance, there was an /s/ → /h/ consonant shift in some words that had already occurred with Vedic Sanskrit (this tendency is even stronger in the Iranian branch of Indo-Iranian), yet is lacking in Kashmiri equivalents. The word rahit in Vedic Sanskrit and modern Hindi-Urdu (meaning excluding or without) corresponds to rost in Kashmiri. Similarly, sahit (meaning including or with) corresponds to sost in Kashmiri.^[24]

First person pronoun[link]

Both the Indo-Aryan and Iranian branches of the Indo-Iranian family have demonstrated a strong tendency to eliminate the distinctive first person pronoun ("I") used in the nominative (subject) case. The Indo-European root for this is reconstructed as *eǵHom, which is preserved in Sanskrit as aham and in Avestan Persian as azam. This contrasts with the m- form ("me", "my") that is used for the accusative, genitive, dative, ablative cases. Sanskrit and Avestan both used forms such as ma(-m). However, in languages such as Modern Persian, Baluchi, Hindi-Urdu and Punjabi, the distinct nominative form has been entirely lost and replaced with m- in words such as ma-n and mai. However, Kashmiri belongs to a relatively small set that preserves the distinction. 'I' is bi/ba/boh in various Kashmiri dialects, distinct from the other me terms. 'Mine' is myoon in Kashmiri. Other Indo-Aryan languages that preserve this feature include Dogri (aun vs me-), Gujarati (hu-n vs ma-ri), and Braj (hau-M vs mai-M). The Iranian Pashto preserves it too (za vs. maa).^[25]

See also[link]

Poetry portal

• Dardic languages
• Kashmiri literature
• List of topics on the land and the people of “Jammu and Kashmir”
• List of Kashmiri poets
• Neab International Kashmiri Magazine
• States of India by Kashmiri speakers

References[link]

External links[link]

Kashmiri language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Grierson, George Abraham. A Dictionary of the Kashmiri Language. Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1932.
• Lexical Borrowings in Kashmiri by Ashok K Koul Delhi: Indian Institute of Language Studies,2008.
• Koul, Omkar. Kashmiri: A grammatical sketch
• Koul,Omkar N & Kashi Wali Modern Kashmiri Grammar Hyattsville, Dunwoody Press, 2006.
• Koshur: An Introduction to Spoken Kashmiri
• Kashmiri
• Kashmiri font, and language information
• Kashmiri Newspaper"Soan Meeraas",Published from Srinagar,Kashmir
• Kashmiri Proverbs
• Online Kashmiri Dictionary

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