Template:Wp/kls/کالاشہ زبان کے بارے میں انگریزی مضمون

From Wikimedia Incubator

Kalasha (also known as Kalasha-mondr) is an Indo-European language in the Indo-Aryan branch spoken by the Kalash people, further classified as a Dardic language in the Chitral Group. Georg Morgenstierne maintains that "The Kalasha do not belong to the special Kafir branch of Indo-Iranian but speak a true Indo-Aryan language.The Kalasha language is phonologically atypical because it contrasts plain, long, nasal, and retroflex vowels as well as combinations of these (Heegård & Mørch 2004). According to the Chitrali researcher Rehmat Aziz Chitrali, the correct name of the language is Kalasha.

The Kalasha language is the closest modern language to Ancient Sanskrit(old Indo-Aryan) closely followed by Western Dardic language, Khowar.

Kalasha is spoken by the Kalasha people who reside in the remote valleys of Bumburet, Birir and Rumbur, which are west of Ayun, which is ten miles down the river from Chitral Town, high in the Hindu Kush mountains in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. The Kalasha have their own religion, with gods and goddesses, although it is estimated that half of the Kalasha have converted to Islam. There are an estimated 6,000 speakers of Kalasha, of which 3,000 still follow the Kalasha religion and the other 3,000 have converted to Islam.

According to Badshah Munir Bukhari, one of the world's leading authorities on this subject, "Kalasha" is also the ethnic name for the Nuristani inhabitants of a region southwest of the Kalasha Valleys, in the Waygal and middle Pech Valleys of Afghanistan's Nuristan Province. The term "Kalasha" seems to have been adopted by the Kalasha speakers of Chitral from the Nuristanis of Waygal, who for a time expanded up to southern Chitral several centuries ago.However, there is no close connection between the Indo-Aryan language Kalasha-mun and the Nuristani language Kalasha-ala, which descend from different branches of the Indo-Iranian languages.

Until the latter 20th century, Kalasha was an undocumented language. More recently, through the work of a Greek NGO and local Kalasha elders seeking to preserve their oral traditions, a new Kalasha alphabet has been created. Working in close collaboration with various international researchers and linguists, Kalasha linguist Taj Khan Kalash organized first "Kalasha Orthography Conference in Islamabad Pakistan. Having moved to Thessaloniki, Greece, to study linguistics in the Aristotle University, he and the Greek NGO Mesogaia took on the task of compiling the script and creating The Alphabet Book, a primer used to teach the alphabet to the Kalasha children. In 2004 he was able to raise funds to publish first alphabet book of Kalasha language based on Roman script designed by an Australian linguist, Gregory R. Cooper.

Of all the languages in the subcontinent, Kalasha is likely the most conservative, along with the nearby western Dardic language Khowar.In a few cases, Kalasha is even more conservative than Khowar, e.g. in retaining voiced aspirate consonants, which have disappeared from most other Dardic languages.

Photo Credit: Woudloper