| Group |
Iranian (with Persian,
Kurdish etc.), Northwest Iranian (with Gilani,
Ormuri etc.) |
| Geography |
Baluchi is spoken in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan. In
Central Asia where different language areas are mixed it is sometimes hard
to identify the exact borders between different tongues, and due to insufficient
knowledge on the subject the total number of Baluchi speakers is again
undefined: about 4,5 million people. Some scientists claim about some 20
dialects within the language, some of them are close to other Iranian languages,
some were influenced by Indic tongues in Pakistan. The Baluchi language
is official in Pakistan, and there is rich literature written in it also
in Afghanistan. |
| History |
The oldest literature sources date back to the 18th century, when the
majority of literate population still wrote in Arabic or in Urdu. |
| Phonetics |
Baluchi phonetics preserved many archaic traits, for instance the opposition
of long and short vowels. |
| Nominal Morphology |
The nouns are also a bit archaic (compared to Persian
and other related languages) and use four cases, as well as the pronouns.
Linguists argue whether Baluchi is an ergative or a nominative language:
in the past of the verbs the transitive ones use ergative constructions,
intransitive - nominative constructions. |
| Verbal Morphology |
The system of the verb is also archaic with its 2 voices and 4 moods
formed with inflections. In the indicative mood, up to 9 tenses can be
found (dependng on a dialect). A characteristic feature of Baluchi is the
difference between transitive and intransitive verbs in the past tenses:
the former use an ergative construction of the sentence, the latter use
the nominative type. |
| Lexicon |
There are a lot of Indic (Urdu) and even more Arabic words in the language. |
| Writing |
Baluchi uses either Cyrillic-based
(Turkmenistan) or Arabic-based (Afghanistan, Pakistan) script for its literature. |
| Close Contacts |
Indic languages (mainly Urdu) in Pakistan,
Iranian languages (Pashto, Dari,
Persian) in Iran and Afghanistan, Turkish languages
(Turkmenian) in Turkmenistan |
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| Picture |
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| More info |
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