Burushaski language

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Burushaski (ISO/DIS 639-3 bsk) is a language isolate spoken by some 50,000-60,000 Burusho people in the Hunza, Nagir, Yasin, and parts of the Gilgit valleys in northern Pakistan. Other names for the language are Kanjut (Kunjoot), Khaguna, Werchikwār, Boorishki, Brushas (Brushias).

Calvert Watkins, editor of the Indo-European etymologies in the American Heritage dictionaries, suggested that the word *abel (apple), the only fruit tree reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European, may have been borrowed from a language ancestral to Burushaski.

Today Burushaski contains numerous loanwords from Urdu and a few from neighbouring Dardic languages such as Khowar and Shina, but the original vocabulary remains largely intact. The Dardic languages also contain large numbers of loan words from Burushaski.

Contents 1 Classification 2 Literature 3 Phonology 4 Notes 5 References 6 See also 7 External links

Classification

Attempts have been made to establish a genealogic relationship between Burushaski and SumerianTemplate:Fact, Basque, the Caucasian, DravidianTemplate:Fact, and Indo European<ref>in particular a relationship with a "Paleo-Balkan" group (Phrygian and Thracian), as well as Balto-Slavic, was proposed by Ilija Casule at Macquarie University</ref> language families; Burushaski has also traditionally been part of the Dene-Caucasian hypothesis, along with Yeniseian and Sino-Tibetan. However, none these efforts have met with general acceptance.

Recently George van Driem at Leiden University revived links between Burushaski and Yeniseian in a language family he calls Karasuk. He believes the Burusho took part in the migration out of Central Asia that resulted in the Indo-European conquest of the Indian sub-continent, while other Karasuk peoples migrated northwards to become the Yenisei. These claims have recently been picked up by linguist Roger Blench.

Literature

There are three dialects of Burushaski: those used in Hunza, Nagar, and Yasin. The dialect of Yasin is thought to be the most pure (least affected by contact with neighboring languages), but the literary and most popular dialect is that of Hunza. The language was seldom written for centuries; today it uses a modified version of the Arabic script, and Partawi Shah has written poetry in Burushaski.

Tibetan sources record a Bru-sá language of the Gilgit valley, which appears to have been Burushaski. The Bru-sá are credited with bringing the Bön religion to Tibet and Central Asia, and their script is alleged to have been the ancestor of the Tibetan alphabet. Thus Burushaski may once have been a significant literary language. However, no Bru-sá manuscripts are known to have survived.

The Burushaski Research Academy submitted the first volume of their Burushaski-Urdu Dictionary to print on 31 October 2005.

Phonology

There are various phoneme inventories attributed to Burushaski by different scholars.

Consonants 1

		Bilabial	Dental	Alveo- palatal	Retroflex	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stops	Voiceless	Template:IPA	Template:IPA		Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPA
	Aspirated	Template:IPA	Template:IPA		Template:IPA	Template:IPA
	Voiced	Template:IPA	Template:IPA		Template:IPA	Template:IPA
Affricates			Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPA
Fricatives	Voiceless		Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPA		Template:IPA
	Voiced		Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPA
Nasals		Template:IPA	Template:IPA			Template:IPA
Liquids*		Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPA
Rhotic			Template:IPA

* Liquids are glides and laterals.

Consonants (Berger)

		Bilabial	Dental	Alveo- palatal	Retroflex	Velar	Uvular
Stops	Tenuis	Template:IPA	Template:IPA		Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPA
	Aspirated	Template:IPA	Template:IPA		Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPA
	Voiced	Template:IPA	Template:IPA		Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPA
Affricates	Tenuis		Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPA
	Aspirated		Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPA
	Voiced		Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPA
Fricatives	Voiceless		Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPA
Nasals		Template:IPA	Template:IPA			Template:IPA

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Notes

References

• Backstrom, Peter C, "Burushaski" in Backstrom and Radloff (eds.), Languages of northern areas, Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan, 2. Islamabad, National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University and Summer Institute of Linguistics (1992), 31-54.
• Blazek, V. and Bengtson, D., Lexica Dene-Caucasica, Central Asiatic Journal 39 (1995), 11-50, 161-164.
• van Driem, George, Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region, containing an Introduction to the Symbiotic Theory of Language Leiden: Brill: (2001, 2 vols.).
• van Skyhawk, Hugh, Burushaski-Texte aus Hispar. Materialien zum Verständnis einer archaischen Bergkultur in Nordpakistan, Beiträge zur Indologie, 38, Wiesbaden: (2003), ISBN 3-447-04645-7.

See also

• Partawi Shah

External links

• SIL Ethnologue entry
• Burushaski: An Extraordinary Language in the Karakoram Mountains (PDF)
• Ilija Casule publications on Thraco-Phrygian and Balto-Slavic connections of Burushaskibr:Bourouchaskeg

da:Burushaski de:Burushaski eo:Buruŝa lingvo eu:Buruxaski fr:Burushaski it:Burushaski nl:Burushaski ja:ブルーシャスキー語 fi:Burušaskin kieli zh:布魯夏斯基語