Balochi language

Balochi or Baluchi () is an Iranian language spoken primarily in the Balochistan region of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. In addition, there are speakers in Oman, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Turkmenistan, East Africa and in diaspora communities in other parts of the world. The total number of speakers, according to '' Ethnologue'', is 8.75 million. Of these, 6.28 million are in Pakistan.

According to Brian Spooner,

Balochi belongs to the Western Iranian subgroup, and its original homeland is suggested to be around the central Caspian region.

Classification

Balochi is an Indo-European language, belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the family. As an Iranian language it is classified in the Northwestern group. '' Glottolog'' classifies 3 different varieties, namely Eastern Balochi, Koroshi and Southern-Western Balochi, under the "Balochic" group.

Morphology

Balochi, like many Western Iranian languages, has lost the Old Iranian gender distinctions.

Phonology

Vowels

The Balochi vowel system has at least eight vowels: five long and three short. These are , , , , , , and . The short vowels have more centralized phonetic quality than the long vowels. The variety spoken in Karachi also has nasalized vowels, most importantly and .

Consonants

The following table shows consonants which are common to both Western (Northern) and Southern Balochi. The consonants /s/, /z/, /n/, /ɾ/ and /l/ are articulated as alveolar in Western Balochi. The plosives /t/ and /d/ are dental in both dialects.

In addition, occurs in a few words in Southern Balochi. (voiceless velar fricative) in some loanwords in Southern Balochi corresponding to (voiceless uvular fricative) in Western Balochi; and (voiced velar fricative) in some loanwords in Southern Balochi corresponding to (voiced uvular fricative) in Western Balochi.

In Eastern Balochi, it is noted that the stop and glide consonants may also occur as aspirated allophones in word initial position as and . Allophones of stops in postvocalic position include for voiceless stops, and for voiced stops . are also dentalized as .

Grammar

The normal word order is subject–object–verb. Like many other Indo-Iranian languages, Balochi also features split ergativity. The subject is marked as nominative except for the past tense constructions where the subject of a transitive verb is marked as oblique and the verb agrees with the object.

Numerals

Much of the Balochi number system is identical to Persian. According to Mansel Longworth Dames, Balochi writes the first twelve numbers as follows:

;Notes

Dialects

There are two main dialects: the dialect of the Mandwani (northern) tribes and the dialect of the Domki (southern) tribes.. The dialectal differences are not very significant. One difference is that grammatical terminations in the northern dialect are less distinct compared with those in the southern tribes. An isolated dialect is Koroshi, which is spoken in the Qashqai tribal confederation in the Fars province. Koroshi distinguishes itself in grammar and lexicon among Balochi varieties.

Writing system

Balochi was not a written language before the 19th century,. and the Persian script was used to write Balochi wherever necessary. However, Balochi was still spoken at the Baloch courts.

British colonial officers first wrote Balochi with the Latin script. Following the creation of Pakistan, Baloch scholars adopted the Persian alphabet. The first collection of poetry in Balochi, Gulbang by Mir Gul Khan Nasir was published in 1951 and incorporated the Arabic Script. It was much later that Sayad Zahoor Shah Hashemi wrote a comprehensive guidance on the usage of Arabic script and standardized it as the Balochi Orthography in Pakistan and Iran. This earned him the title of the 'Father of Balochi'. His guidelines are widely used in Eastern and Western Balochistan. In Afghanistan, Balochi is still written in a modified Arabic script based on Persian.

In 2002, a conference was held to help standardize the script that would be used for Balochi.

Old Balochi Alphabet

The following alphabet was used by Syed Zahoor Shah Hashmi in his lexicon of Balochi ''Sayad Ganj'' () (lit. ''Sayad's Treasure''). Until the creation of the Balochi Standard Alphabet, it was by far the most widely used alphabet for writing Balochi, and is still used very frequently.

Standard Perso-Arabic Alphabet

The Balochi Standard Alphabet, standardized by Balochi Academy Sarbaz, consists of 29 letters. It is an extension of the Perso-Arabic script and borrows a few glyphs from Urdu

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