Khetrānī, or Khetranki, is an
Indo-Aryan language of north-eastern
Balochistan
Balochistan ( ; bal, بلۏچستان; also romanised as Baluchistan and Baluchestan) is a historical region in Western and South Asia, located in the Iranian plateau's far southeast and bordering the Indian Plate and the Arabian Sea coastline. ...
. It is spoken by the majority of the
Khetrans, a
Baloch tribe that occupies a hilly tract in the
Sulaiman Mountains comprising the whole of
Barkhan District as well as small parts of neighbouring
Kohlu District to the south-west, and
Musakhel District to the north. The ethnic Khetran population found to the east in the Vehova Tehsil of
Taunsa Sharif District of Punjab instead speak Saraiki. Alternative names for the language attested at the start of the 20th century are ''Barāzai'' and ''Jāfaraki''.
Khetrani has grammatical features in common with both
Saraiki and with
Sindhi
Sindhi may refer to:
*something from, or related to Sindh, a province of Pakistan
* Sindhi people, an ethnic group from the Sindh region
* Sindhi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them
People with the name
* Sarkash Sindhi (1940–2012 ...
, but is not mutually intelligible with either. Khetrani has a relatively small number of
Balochi loanwords in its vocabulary. Khetrani was formerly a dialect continuum of both Sindhi and Saraiki.
It is likely to have been formerly spoken over a wider area, which has been reduced with the expansion of
Pashto
Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani ().
Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official langua ...
from the north and Balochi from the south-east. The earlier suggestion that Khetrani might be a remnant of a
Dardic language has been found "difficult to substantiate" by more detailed recent research.
__NOTOC__
History
Footnotes
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Worldview of Khetran
{{Northwestern Indo-Aryan languages
Languages of Balochistan, Pakistan
Northwestern Indo-Aryan languages