Dardic languages
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| Dardic | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Afghanistan (eastern) India (northwestern) Pakistan (northern) |
| Genetic classification: |
Indo-European Indo-Iranian Dardic |
| Subdivisions: |
—
|
The Dardic languages are a group of Indo-Iranian languages spoken in eastern Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, and in the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir which is divided between India and Pakistan.
The Dardic group has traditionally been defined as a sub-group of the Indo-Aryan languages which experienced strong influence from the Iranian languages. Some linguists today define it as a third independent branch of Indo-Iranian (co-equal with Indo-Aryan and Iranian), but this is controversial. It is also not clear that all of the languages currently included in Dardic form a single genetic family, rather than several different families with common features due to areal influence.
Another group of languages spoken in Afghanistan, Nuristani, has sometimes been included in Dardic, but is today generally regarded as an independent group — usually as a sub-group of Indo-Aryan, or sometimes as another independent branch of Indo-Iranian.
Except for Kashmiri, all of the Dardic languages are small minority languages which have not been sufficiently studied. In many cases they are spoken in areas difficult to access due to mountainous terrain and/or armed conflicts in the region. All of the languages (including Kashmiri) have been historically influenced by more prominent non-Dardic neighboring languages, which blurs their classification. A further complicating factor is the politics of the region — defining the languages of Jammu and Kashmir as non-Indo-Aryan languages has connotations of cultural separation from India, at a time of armed conflict by separatist groups in the territory. These factors make it difficult for objective conclusions to be made to date as to the position of Dardic within Indo-Iranian, and its actual members.
This list is similar to the classification system used by Ethnologue[1].
- Chitral languages
- Kashmiri languages
- Kohistani languages
- Kunar languages
- Shina languages
- Gilgiti Shina main dialect
- Astori Shina
- Brokskad The Shina of Baltistan and Ladakh
- Domaaki
- Kohistani Shina
- Palula
- Savi
- Ushojo
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