Kundal Shahi language

Kundal Shahi is a Dardic language spoken by about 700 people in the Kundal Shahi village of Neelam Valley in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan. It is an endangered language and its speakers are shifting to Hindko.

Kundal Shahi
کنڈل شاہی
Native to	Pakistan
Region	Neelam Valley
Native speakers	700 (2005)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Dardic Kundal Shahi
Language codes
ISO 639-3	shd
Glottolog	kund1257
Kundal Shahi Kundal Shahi
Coordinates: 34.5548°N 73.8439°E

Phonology

The following tables set out the phonology of Kundal Shahi.[2]

Vowels

Kundal Shahi is unusual amongst Dardic languages in that it has front rounded vowels.[3]

	Front		Central	Back
	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
Close	i iː	y yː		u uː
Close-Mid	e eː	øː	ə	o oː
Open-Mid	ɛ ɛː		ʌ	ɔ ɔː
Open			a aː

Consonants

Like Kashmiri, Kundal Shahi is unusual amongst Dardic languages in that it lacks retroflex fricatives and affricates.[3]

		Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n	ɳ		(ŋ)
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	ʈ		k
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ	ʈʰ		kʰ
	voiced	b	d	ɖ		ɡ
Affricate	voiceless				tʃ
	aspirated				tʃʰ
	voiced				dʒ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s		ʃ	x	h
	voiced		z
Lateral			l
Flap			ɾ	ɽ
Approximant					j	w

Tone

Kundal Shahi, like many Dardic languages, has either phonemic tone or, as in Kundal Shahi, pitch accent.[4] Words may have only one accented mora, which is associated with high pitch; the remaining mora have a default or low pitch.[3]

References

1. Kundal Shahi at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Baart & Rehman 2005, pp. 10–13.
3. Baart & Rehman 2005.
4. Baart 2003, pp. 3, 6.

Bibliography

• Baart, Joan L. G. (2003), Tonal features in languages of northern Pakistan (PDF), National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University and Summer Institute of Linguistics, pp. 3, 6
• Baart, Joan L. G.; Rehman, Khawaja A. (2005). "A first look at the language of Kundal Shahi in Azad Kashmir". SIL Electronic Working Papers.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Further reading

• Rehman, Khawaja A. (2011). "Ergativity In Kundal Shahi, Kashmiri And Hindko". In Mark Turin; Bettina Zeisler (eds.). Himalayan languages and linguistics: studies in phonology, semantics, morphology and syntax. Brill's Tibetan studies library, Languages of the greater Himalayan region. Leiden: Brill. pp. 219–234. ISBN 978-90-04-19448-9.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Rehman, Khawaja A. (2011). Language Shift In the Neelam Valley: A Case Study of the Kundal Shahi Language (PhD). Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

External links

• ELAR archive of Documentation of the Kundal Shahi Language, Kundal Shahi, Pakistan