Rushani is one of the Pamir languages spoken in

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

and

Tajikistan Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. Dushanbe is the capital city, capital and most populous city. Tajikistan borders Afghanistan to the Afghanistan–Tajikistan border, south, Uzbekistan to ...

. Rushani is relatively closer to all Northern Pamiri languages sub-group whether it is Shughni, Yazgulami, Sarikuli or Oroshori sharing many grammatical and vocabulary similarity with all of them especially with Shughni and thus some linguists consider it a dialect of Shughni. Rushan is divided into two parts by Panj river where on right bank along Bartang river to the East located Rushan district of GBAO,

and on the left side located several villages of Roshan area in northern part of the Sheghnan District, in the

Badakhshan Province Badakhshan Province (Dari: بدخشان) is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the northeastern part of the country. It is bordered by Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan in the north and the Pakistani regions of Lower and Upper C ...

and the

Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region Gorno-Badakhshan, officially the Badakhshan Mountainous Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region in eastern Tajikistan, in the Pamir Mountains. It makes up nearly forty-five percent of the country's land area but only two percent of its popul ...

in Tajikistan. Afghani Roshan consists of six villages including Rubotin, Paguor, Chawed, York, Shaikhin and Chasnud, five of which are located on the bank of the river Panj, which meets at the border of Tajikistan.Muller, K. 2010: ''Language in Community-Oriented and Contact-Oriented Domains: The Case of the Shughni of Tajakistan.'' SIL International. Most Rushani speakers belong to the

Ismaili Ismailism () is a branch of Shia Islam. The Isma'ili () get their name from their acceptance of Imam Isma'il ibn Jafar as the appointed spiritual successor ( imām) to Ja'far al-Sadiq, wherein they differ from the Twelver Shia, who accept ...

branch of

Shi'a Islam Shia Islam is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that Muhammad designated Ali ibn Abi Talib () as both his political successor (caliph) and as the spiritual leader of the Muslim community (imam). However, his right is understood ...

Language use

Rushani, like Shughni, is only used in unofficial settings. All of the children in the community learn Rushani as their first language and rely heavily on it until they enroll in school. It is only then that they learn the official language of the country. Adult speakers are all bi- or tri-lingual in Tajik and

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

. Traditionally Rushani was not a written language, with Rushani speakers writing in

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

.Dodykhudoeva, L. 2007: ''Revitalization of minority languages: comparative dictionary of key cultural terms in the languages and dialects of the Shugni-Rushani group. London: SOAS. Writing systems have been developed for the language using

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

and

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

scripts, for example for use in translation of parts of the bible by the Institute for Bible Translation.

Phonology

Vowels

*Long vowels occur as /, , , /

Consonants

The following are the consonants of Rushani: * /r/ can be realised as a trill or a tap � * A glottal /h/ may also appear due to the influence of Tajik.

Orthography

Verbs

Rushani is unusual in having a transitive alignment system – a so-called ''double-

oblique Oblique may refer to: * an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / ) *Oblique angle, in geometry * Oblique triangle, in geometry * Oblique lattice, in geometry * Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the ...

'' clause structure – in the past tense. That is, in the past tense, the agent and object of a transitive verb are both marked, while the subject of an intransitive verb is not. In the present tense, the object of the transitive verb is marked, the other two roles are not – that is, a typical nominative–accusative alignment.J.R. Payne, 'Language Universals and Language Types', in Collinge, ed. 1990. ''An Encyclopedia of Language''. Routledge. From Payne, 1980. See transitive alignment for examples.

Literature

* Zarubin, I.I. Bartangskie i rushanskie teksty i slovar. Moskva : Izd-vo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1937. *Payne, John, "Pamir languages" in ''Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum'', ed. Schmitt (1989), 417–444. *Payne, John. "The decay of ergativity in Pamir languages." ''Lingua'' 51:147-186.

References

External links

* Rushan

at the Endangered Languages Project {{Iranian languages Pamir languages Eastern Iranian languages Languages of Tajikistan Endangered languages of Tajikistan