Wakhi language

Wakhi is an Indo-European language in the Iranian branch of the language family spoken today mainly in Northern Pakistan, North Eastern Afghanistan, China and Tajikistan.

Classification and distribution

Wakhi is one of several languages that belong to the areal Pamir language group. Its relationship to the other Iranian languages is not clear; in certain features Wakhi shows affinity to the extinct Saka language in particular.

The Wakhi people are occasionally called Pamiris. The origin of this language is Wakhan in Afghanistan and it is, according to many sources, more than four thousand years old. It is spoken by the inhabitants of the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan, parts of Gilgit–Baltistan (the former NAs) of Pakistan, Gorno-Badkhshan (mountainous-Badakhshan, in Russian) region of Tajakistan, and Xinjiang in western China. The Wakhi use the self-appellation ‘Xik’ (ethnic) and suffix it with ‘wor’/’war’ to denote their language as ‘Xik-wor’ themselves. The noun ‘Xik’ comes from ‘oxik’ (an inhabitant of ‘Ox’, for Wakhan, in Wakhi. There are other equivalents for the name Wakhi (Anglicised) or Wakhani (Arabic and Persian), Vakhantsy (Russian), Gojali/Gojo (Dingrik-wor/Shina), Guyits/Guicho (Borushaski), Wakhigi/Wakhik-war (Kivi-wor/Khow-wor) and Cert (Turki). The language belongs, as yet to be confirmed according to studies and sources, to the southern group of the Pamir languages, in the Iranian group of the Indo-European family (450) of languages, where the different Ishkashmi, Shighni/…nani and Wakhi languages are included. A very rough estimate of the population of Wakhis is 58,000 worldwide. The Wakhi live in six different countries. In the Gilgit–Baltistan region of Pakistan, the Wakhi people mainly live in Gojal, Ishkoman, Darkut and in Chitral District's Broghol. They also live in some parts of Wakhan in Afghanistan, Gorno-Badakhshan in Tajikistan, Xinjiang in China, Russia and Turkey

In Afghanistan

In the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan, Wakhi is spoken from Putur, near Ishkashim, to the upper reaches of the Wakhan River.^[3]

In Tajikistan

In Tajikistan the Wakhi and other communities that speak one of the Pamir languages refer to themselves as Pamiri or Badakhshani and there has been a movement to separate their identity from that of the majority Persian-speaking Tajiks. Linguists universally refer to Wakhi as an East Iranian language independent of Tajik Persian, but many Tajik nationalists insist that Wakhi and other Pamir languages are actually dialects of Tajik.^[4]

In Pakistan

In Pakistan Wakhi is spoken in the sparsely populated upper portions of five of the northernmost valleys: Hunza (many ethnic Wakhi of this valley now speak Government of Pakistan and which works with the collaboration of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Lok Virsa Pakistan. The Association is working for the preservation of the Wakhi language and culture, as well as documenting their poetry and music.

Silk Road Festival from the President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf. A computerized codification of the Wakhi script has been released, which will help to promote the language development programme and documentation of Wakhi poetry, literature, and history. ^[5]

In China

Wakhi is also spoken in the Xinjiang province of China.

In Russia

There are approximately 6000 Wakhi in Russia, Most of them have migrated from Tajikistan and Afghanistan.

In Turkey

There are some Wakhi villages in Turkey in the Eastern Kurdistan, where they have migrated from Afghanistan in 1979 during the Afghan and Russian war.^[6]

Orthography

Traditionally Wakhi was not a written language. Writing systems have been developed for the language using Arabic script, Cyrillic and a modified Roman alphabet.^[7] A modified roman alphabet was developed in 1984 by Haqiqat Ali:^[8]

The new Wakhi Alphabet

Sample text from a Bible translation published in 2001 is shown below.^[9]

Vocabulary

The Wakhi lexicon exhibits significant differences with the other Pamir languages. Gawarjon's comparison of the dialects of Sarikoli and Wakhi spoken in China is reproduced below.

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

Books

1. Wakhi Khushkhati (Wakhi Calligraphy)
2. Wakhi Qaida (Wakhi Primer)
3. Wakhi Huroof (Wakhi letters)

References

1. ^ Wakhi at Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013)
2. ^ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Wakhi". Glottolog 2.2. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. 
3. ^ Payne, John (1989). "Pamir Languages". In Schmitt, Rüdiger. Compendium Linguarum Iranicum. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag. p. 419.  
4. ^ Viires, Ants; Lauri Vahtre (2001). The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire. Tallinn: NGO Red Book.  
5. ^ Wakhi Tajik Cultural Association report 1991–2001. Pakistan: Wakhi Cultural Association. 2001. 
6. ^ See the book online "The Kirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan in Turkey"
7. ^ Wakhi Roman alphabets on Gojal.net
8. ^ Ali, Haqiqat (1984). Wakhi Language 1. 
9. ^ Luqo Inǰil (Gospel of Luke) (in Wakhi). Bəzыrg Kitob tarǰimacrakыzg institute. 2001. : Title page, passages in Roman alphabet[1],passages in Cyrillic alphabet[2]
10. ^ Gawarjon (高尔锵/Gāo Ěrqiāng) (1985). Outline of the Tajik language (塔吉克语简志/Tǎjíkèyǔ Jiǎnzhì). Beijing: Nationalities Publishing House. 

• Backstrom, Peter C. Languages of Northern Areas (Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan, 2), 1992. 417 pp. ISBN 969-8023-12-7.

See also

• Wakhi people

External links

• Wakhies in Gojal, Pakistan
• The Wakhis: Article from the Ismaili dot net
• English-Ishkashimi-Zebaki-Wakhi-Yazghulami Vocabulary
• Wakhi poetry
• Georg Morgenstierne multimedia database