Tirahi is a nearly extinct if not already extinct Indo-Aryan language spoken in a few villages in the southeast of

Jalalabad Jalalabad (; Help:IPA/Persian, ͡ʒä.lɑː.lɑː.bɑːd̪ is the list of cities in Afghanistan, fifth-largest city of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 200,331, and serves as the capital of Nangarhar Province in the eastern part ...

in the

Nangarhar Province Nangarhār (Pashto: ; Dari: ), also called Nangrahar or Ningrahar, is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the eastern part of the country and Border, bordering Logar Province, Logar, Kabul Province, Kabul, Laghman Province, Laghm ...

of eastern

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 ...

. It is spoken by older adults, who are likewise fluent in

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 ...

. The Tirahis were expelled from Tirah in the present-day Khyber District of

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (; ; , ; abbr. KP or KPK), formerly known as the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), is a Administrative units of Pakistan, province of Pakistan. Located in the Northern Pakistan, northwestern region of the country, Khyber ...

, Pakistan, by the Afridi Pashtuns. Georg Morgenstierne claimed that Tirahi is "probably the remnant of a dialect group extending from Tirah through the

Peshawar district Peshawar District (, , ) is a Districts of Pakistan, district in the Peshawar Division of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. It is located about 160 km west of the Pakistan's capital Islamabad. The district headquarter is the city of ...

into

Swat A SWAT (''Special Weapons and Tactics'') team is a generic term for a police tactical unit within the United States, though the term has also been used by other nations. SWAT units are generally trained, equipped, and deployed to res ...

and Dir."

Geographic distribution

Spoken in the

of Northeastern Afghanistan, there are about 100 native speakers today, if any. This is mainly due to the majority of the Tirahi people having assimilated into the dominant Pashtun culture. Tirahi is also spoken in a couple of villages southeast of the Afghan city of

, such as Jaba, Mitarani, and Bara-khel.

Classification

Tirahi is an Indo-Aryan language. Further, Tirahi is part of the sub-group of

Kohistani languages The Kohistani languages are a group of several Indo-Aryan languages The Indo-Aryan languages, or sometimes Indic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. As of 20 ...

along with languages such as Bateri, Chilisso, Gowro, and others. However, Tirahi also shares with languages spoken further to the east, such as Kashmiri. As a Dardic Language, Tirahi strongly preserves some vocabulary of spoken Sanskrit (cow - dēn in Tirahi, dhēnuh in Sanskrit, hand - ast in Tirahi, hastah in Sanskrit). Being a language spoken in Afghanistan, Tirahi shares various words and grammatical constructs with

, a language spoken throughout Afghanistan to which many Tirahi speakers have become accustomed to speaking. Since Tirahi is entirely separated from the other Dardic languages, located south of the

Kabul River The Kabul River (; ), the classical Cophen , is a river that emerges in the Sanglakh Range of the Hindu Kush mountains in the northeastern part of Maidan Wardak Province, Afghanistan. It is separated from the watershed of the Helmand River by th ...

and west of the

Khyber Pass The Khyber Pass (Urdu: درۂ خیبر; ) is a mountain pass in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, on the border with the Nangarhar Province of Afghanistan. It connects the town of Landi Kotal to the Valley of Peshawar at Jamrud by tr ...

, rendering it wholly encased by Pashto. Tirahi also shares some vocabulary with Kashmiri and Shina such as the Tirahi ''mala'', for a father, the Kashmiri ''mol'', and the Shina ''malo''.Grierson, G. (1925). On the Tirahi language. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (New Series), 57(03), 405-416.

Grammar

Tirahi shows much influence from

in phonology, lexicon and even morphology. However, its vocabulary exhibits a connection to Kohistani dialects. Therefore, Tirahi seems to occupy an intermediate position between

and the Kohistani group. Morgenstirne claims that Tirahi is "probably the remnant of a dialect group extending from Tirahi through the

into

and Dir."

Nouns and adjectives

Tirahi is an

inflected In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

language, having 5 cases:

Nominative In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants of E ...

, Oblique,

Genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can ...

Dative In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a drink". In this exampl ...

, and Ablative. Adjectives, verbs, and nouns usually agree according to gender. Consonant-final nouns add e or a along with their traditional endings. There appears to be an indefinite article, added to the end of the word as an -ī, similar to Farsi.

Pronouns

1st person pronouns: 2nd person pronouns:

Verbs

# Non finite forms ## Infinitive: stem + an (''karan -'' 'to do/make') # Tense-aspect forms ## Imperative Singular: stem, Imperative Plural: stem + V ## Present-future: root + endings - 1st: - m, 2nd: -s, 3rd: -e, 1st plural: -en ## Definite Present: da/de + present-future

Example sentences

* ''Abo-e kata dur thi?'' ('Village' + 'how much far' + 'is') ** "How far is your village?" * ''Pali de kham'' ('Bread' + Definite Future + 'Eat') ** "I am eating bread." * ''La brok odasta ga'' ('He' + 'Very' + 'Hungry' + 'become/go') ** "He became very hungry" * ''Ao mara ga-m'' ('I' + 'die' + 'become') ** "I died/am dead"

References

External links

YouTube sample of Tirahi
{{Indo-Aryan languages Dardic languages Languages of Afghanistan