Kundal Shahi (, Kunḍal Šāhī) 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 the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily concentrated in India, Pa ...

spoken by about 700 people in the Kundal Shahi village of Neelam Valley in

Azad Kashmir Azad Jammu and Kashmir (; ), abbreviated as AJK and colloquially referred to as simply Azad Kashmir, is a region administered by Pakistan as a nominally self-governing entitySee: * * * and constituting the western portion of the larger K ...

, Pakistan. It is an endangered language and its speakers are shifting to

Hindko Hindko (, romanized: , ) is a cover term for a diverse group of Lahnda dialects spoken by several million people of various ethnic backgrounds in several areas in northwestern Pakistan, primarily in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and P ...

Phonology

The following tables set out the phonology of Kundal Shahi.

Vowels

Kundal Shahi is unusual amongst

Dardic languages 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. The term "Dardic" is stated to b ...

in that it has

front rounded vowel A front rounded vowel is a particular type of vowel that is both front and rounded. The front rounded vowels defined by the IPA include: * , a close front rounded vowel (or "high front rounded vowel") * , a near-close front rounded vowel (or "ne ...

Consonants

Kashmiri Kashmiri may refer to: * People or things related to the Kashmir Valley or the broader region of Kashmir * Kashmiris, an ethnic group native to the Kashmir Valley * Kashmiri language, their language People with the name * Kashmiri Saikia Barua ...

, Kundal Shahi is unusual amongst

in that it lacks

retroflex A retroflex ( /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal ( /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the ha ...

fricatives and affricates.

Tone

Kundal Shahi, like many

, has either phonemic tone or, as in Kundal Shahi,

pitch accent A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ...

. Words may have only one accented mora, which is associated with high pitch; the remaining mora have a default or low pitch.

Endangered

Kundal Shahi is severely endangered with less than 500 speakers, most of whom are over the age of 40.

References

Bibliography

* *

External links

ELAR archive of Documentation of the Kundal Shahi Language, Kundal Shahi, Pakistan
{{Dardic languages Dardic languages Languages of Azad Kashmir