Khetrānī, or Khetranki, is an
Indo-Aryan language
The Indo-Aryan languages, or sometimes Indic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family. As of 2024, there are more than 1.5 billion speakers, primarily concentrated east of the Indus river in Ba ...
of north-eastern
Balochistan
Balochistan ( ; , ), also spelled as Baluchistan or Baluchestan, is a historical region in West and South Asia, located in the Iranian plateau's far southeast and bordering the Indian Plate and the Arabian Sea coastline. This arid region o ...
. It is spoken by the majority of the
Khetrans
The Khetrans are an ethnolinguistic group primarily native to Barkhan in Balochistan and Dera Ghazi Khan in Punjab, Pakistan. The total population was estimated to be about 150,000 in 2017, at least two-thirds of which are speakers of their nativ ...
, an ethnolinguistic tribe that occupies a hilly tract in the
Sulaiman Mountains
The Sulaiman Mountains, also known as Kōh-e Sulaymān, Kasē Ghrūna Da Suleiman Ghruna (Pashto: د كسې غرونه ، د سلیمان غرونه; "Mountains of Qaes/Kasi and Solomon") ( Balochi:; "Mountains of Solomon") are a north–south ex ...
comprising the whole of
Barkhan District
Barkhan (Balochi language, Balochi: بارخان, , ) is a Districts of Pakistan, district in the province of Balochistan (Pakistan), Balochistan in Pakistan. It shares its borders with the Punjab, Pakistan, province of Punjab to the east and the ...
as well as small parts of neighbouring
Kohlu District
Kohlu district (, ) is a district of the Balochistan province of Pakistan. It is bounded in the north by Loralai District, with Dera Bugti in the south, Barkhan in the east, and Sibi District in the west.
Administration
Demographics ...
to the south-west, and
Musakhel District to the north. 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
Sindhi and with
Saraiki, 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, natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. It has official status in Afghanistan and the Pakistani province of Khyb ...
from the north and Balochi from the south-east. The earlier suggestion that Khetrani might be a remnant of a
Dardic language
The Dardic languages (also Dardu or Pisaca), or Hindu-Kush Indo-Aryan languages, are a group of several Indo-Aryan languages spoken in northern Pakistan, northwestern India and parts of northeastern Afghanistan. This region has sometimes been r ...
has been found "difficult to substantiate" by more detailed recent research.
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History
Footnotes
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External links
Worldview of Khetran
{{Authority control
Languages of Balochistan, Pakistan
Northwestern Indo-Aryan languages