Yidgha language

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Yidgha
یدغا
Native toChitral District, Pakistan
EthnicityYidgha
Native speakers
6,000 (2020)[1]
Indo-European
  • Nastaʿlīq)[2]
Language codes
ISO 639-3ydg
Glottologyidg1240
ELPYidgha
Linguasphere58-ABD-bb

The Yidgha language (یدغا زڤون) is an

Lotkoh Valley (Tehsil Lotkoh) of Chitral in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Yidgha is similar to the Munji language
spoken on the Afghan side of the border.

The Garam Chashma area became important during the

Badakshan
in Afghanistan. Almost the entire Munji-speaking population of Afghanistan fled across the border to Chitral during the War in Afghanistan.

Name

According to Georg Morgenstierne (1931), the name Yidgha probably derives from *(h)ind(a,i)-ka-, likely referring to the part of the Munji tribe that settled on the "Indian" or "Indo-Aryan" side near the Lotkoh Valley. Ľubomír Novák (2013) revises the reconstruction as *hindū̆-ka-ka-, with the same assumption.

Study

The Yidgha language has not been given serious study by linguists, except that it is mentioned by Georg Morgenstierne (1926), Kendall Decker (1992) and Badshah Munir Bukhari (2005). A 280-page joint description of Yidgha and Munji (descriptive and historical phonetics and grammar, glossary with etymologies where possible) is given by Morgenstierne (1938).

Norwegian linguist Georg Morgenstierne wrote that Chitral is the area of the greatest linguistic diversity in the world.[1] Although

Pashto. Since many of these languages have no written form, letters are usually written in Urdu
.

See also

References

  1. ^ Yidgha at Ethnologue (26th ed., 2023) Closed access icon
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference e25 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

Further reading

  • Decker, Kendall D. (1992). Languages of Chitral. .
  • Novák, Ľubomír (2013). Problem of Archaism and Innovation in the Eastern Iranian Languages. Charles University. Retrieved 14 November 2023.
  • Morgenstierne, Georg (1926) Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan.
  • Morgenstierne, Georg (1931) The Name Munjān and Some Other Names of Places and Peoples in the Hindu Kush. Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London.
  • Morgenstierne, Georg (1938) Indo-Iranian Frontier Languages II (Yidgha-Munji, Sanglechi-Ishkashmi and Wakhi). Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, Serie B: XXXV. Oslo.
  • Decker, Kendall D. (1992). Languages of Chitral (Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan, 5). National Institute of Pakistani Studies, 257 pp. .