| Group |
Iranian (with Persian,
Kurdish etc.), Southeast Iranian (with Pashto,
Khwaresmian, etc.) |
| Geography |
The group of minor Iranian languages spoken in the Pamir mountains,
in the border area between Tadjikistan, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and
China. The following languages (or dialects) are usually referred to as
the Pamir languages: Wakha, Ishkashimi, Yazgulami, the Shugnano-Rushani
subgroup of dialects (including Shugnani, Rushani, Hufi, Bartangi, Oroshori,
Sarykoli). A number of features are common between Pamir languages and
two other minor dialects of the region: Munjani and Yidga, but this is
still a question. |
| History |
Pamir languages never had writing, their speakers used Tadjik or Uighur
as the language of official communication. Europeans got acquainted with
them only in the late 19th century, and even today they are not studies
enough to say for sure if they are a group of close relatives or a language
unity which emerged in the Pamir mountains. |
| Phonetics |
The phonetic systme varies in different tongues, but everywhere it
shows more long vowels (u, o, i, e) than short (u,
i). As for the consonants, the Pamir languages lack laryngeals
and faryngeals. Some of the languages developed a system of three grades
of stops: normal (k), labiovelar (kw) and palatal
(k') just as it was in the Proto-Indo-European language. |
| Nominal Morphology |
Only a few of the Pamir languages decline their nouns; some of them
have definite article which can be declined, or have postfixes and prepositions
to mark the case and the number. Some of Pamir tongues also preserve the
gender. The pronouns have kept a number of original Indo-European traits,
personal pronouns exist only for the 1st and the 2nd person, demonstrative
pronouns have 3 grades ('this' - 'that' - 'that distant'). |
| Verbal Morphology |
The verbs of the Pamir languages have 2 types of stems: present and
past (derived from the old participle in -ta, -na). The personal
forms are flective in the present tense, but enclitic in the past. The
Munjani language has developed a new secondary system of inflections from
agglutinative suffixes. |
| Lexicon |
The vocabulary of Pamir languages seems rather archaic, having plenty
of terms for different nature objects and lack of modern terminology. New
words are formed with the help of suffixes. |
| Writing |
No writing |
| Close Contacts |
Pashto is the closest relative; Tadjik has influenced much the lexicon
of Pamir tongues, as well as the Uighur language (for the Sarykoli language). |
| Picture |
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| More info |
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