A Linguistic Assessment of the Munji Language in Afghanistan
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Grammatical Gender in Hindukush Languages
Grammatical gender in Hindukush languages An areal-typological study Julia Lautin Department of Linguistics Independent Project for the Degree of Bachelor 15 HEC General linguistics Bachelor's programme in Linguistics Spring term 2016 Supervisor: Henrik Liljegren Examinator: Bernhard Wälchli Expert reviewer: Emil Perder Project affiliation: “Language contact and relatedness in the Hindukush Region,” a research project supported by the Swedish Research Council (421-2014-631) Grammatical gender in Hindukush languages An areal-typological study Julia Lautin Abstract In the mountainous area of the Greater Hindukush in northern Pakistan, north-western Afghanistan and Kashmir, some fifty languages from six different genera are spoken. The languages are at the same time innovative and archaic, and are of great interest for areal-typological research. This study investigates grammatical gender in a 12-language sample in the area from an areal-typological perspective. The results show some intriguing features, including unexpected loss of gender, languages that have developed a gender system based on the semantic category of animacy, and languages where this animacy distinction is present parallel to the inherited gender system based on a masculine/feminine distinction found in many Indo-Aryan languages. Keywords Grammatical gender, areal-typology, Hindukush, animacy, nominal categories Grammatiskt genus i Hindukush-språk En areal-typologisk studie Julia Lautin Sammanfattning I den här studien undersöks grammatiskt genus i ett antal språk som talas i ett bergsområde beläget i norra Pakistan, nordvästra Afghanistan och Kashmir. I området, här kallat Greater Hindukush, talas omkring 50 olika språk från sex olika språkfamiljer. Det stora antalet språk tillsammans med den otillgängliga terrängen har gjort att språken är arkaiska i vissa hänseenden och innovativa i andra, vilket gör det till ett intressant område för arealtypologisk forskning. -
Globalization and Language Policies of Multilingual Societies
Globalization and Language Policies of Multilingual Societies: Some Case Studies of South East Asia Globalização e políticas linguísticas em sociedades multilíngues: Estudos de caso do sudeste da Asia Navin Kumar Singh* Northern Arizona University Flagstaff / USA Shaoan Zhang** University of Nevada Las Vegas / USA Parwez Besmel*** Northern Arizona University Flagstaff / USA ABSTRACT: Over the past few decades, significant economic and political changes have taken place around the world. These changes also have put a significant mark on language teaching and learning practices across the globe. There is a clear movement towards multilingual practices in the world, which is also evident in the title of UNESCO 2003 education position paper, “Education in a multilingual world.” Given the long-standing history of multilingual contexts of the Himalayan region and the emergence of the two major global economic power centers of 21st century, China and India, language policies and practices of the region have become a great matter of interests for linguists and policy makers around the world. This paper uses case studies to investigate how globalization influences language education policies and practices in multilingual countries. The case studies that we have drawn from the four nations of South East Asia – Afghanistan, China, India, and Nepal offer insights for other multilingual nations of the world, as they portray the influences of globalization on language policies and practices of multilingual countries. This paper suggests more research on comparative studies of multilingual education across multilingual nations in the world. KEYWORDS: Language maintenance, globalization, multilingualism, Asian societies. * [email protected] ** [email protected] *** [email protected] RBLA, Belo Horizonte, v. -
Breaking Bread Dinner Series: COVID-19 Special Event Kneading Community at Home Virtual Watch Party: the Breadwinner June 5
Breaking Bread Dinner Series: COVID-19 Special Event Kneading Community at Home Virtual Watch Party: The Breadwinner June 5, 2020 Educational Guide Page Interactive Guide: Before 2 What to know before watching The Breadwinner Viewing Guide: The Breadwinner 5 Themes to consider, discuss, and explore Interactive Guide: After 7 Activities to do after watching The Breadwinner Flavors of Home 10 Recipes from cultures of ReEstablish Richmond clients Recommended for Adults 13 Resources that explore refugee and immigrant experiences Recommended for Children and Youth 15 Resources that explore refugee and immigrant experiences Timeline 16 The history of refugee resettlement in Richmond Interactive Guide: Before What to know before watching The Breadwinner Watch the movie trailer: http://thebreadwinner.com/ The setting of the story The story takes place in the city of Kabul in 2001, at the end of the Taliban regime. Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan, located between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan. To learn more about Kabul: https://www.britannica.com/place/Kabul To learn more about specific, important places shown in the film: https://thebreadwinner2017.weebly.com/setting.html Languages spoken by the characters in the film Dari and Pashto are the official languages of Afghanistan, but there are many regional and minor languages as well. In The Breadwinner, you may hear some words that are unfamiliar to you. • Jan – means “dear” and is used after a person’s name as a way to be polite and friendly • Parvana – means “butterfly” and is a common female name in Afghanistan • Salaam – means “peace” and is the customary way of greeting someone https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-languages-are-spoken-in-afghanistan.html Food sold in the markets and served in the home People from Afghanistan are known for their hospitality and beautiful food. -
New Language Resources for the Pashto Language
New language resources for the Pashto language Djamel Mostefa 1 , Khalid Choukri 1 , Sylvie Brunessaux 2 , Karim Boudahmane 3 1 Evaluation and Language resources Distribution Agency, France 2 CASSIDIAN, France 3 Direction Générale de l'Armement, France E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract This paper reports on the development of new language resources for the Pashto language, a very low-resource language spoken in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the scope of a multilingual data collection project, three large corpora are collected for Pashto. Firstly a monolingual text corpus of 100 million words is produced. Secondly a 100 hours speech database is recorded and manually transcribed. Finally a bilingual Pashto-French parallel corpus of around 2 million is produced by translating Pashto texts into French. These resources will be used to develop Human Language Technology systems for Pashto with a special focus on Machine Translation. Keywords: Pashto, low-resource language, speech corpus, monolingual and multilingual text corpora, web crawling. other one being Dari) and one regional language in 1. Introduction Pakistan. There are very few corpora and Human Language The code assigned to the language by the ISO 639-3 Technology (HLT) services available for Pashto. No standard is [pus]. language resources for Pashto can be found in the According to the Ethnologue.com website, it is spoken by catalogues of LDC1 and ELRA2. around 20 million people and three main dialects are to be Pashto is a very low-resource language. Google doesn't considered: support Pashto in its search engine or translation services. -
Why French Is Awesome!
WHY FRENCH IS AWESOME! Last updated July 2018 • Find this ONLINE at tinyurl.com/FrenchStatsJonShee (In the online version of this document, all asterisks are hyperlinks to the sources/articles used for each statement.) • French is the most learned (and most popular) second language in the world after English.*, *, * Different sources say 82 - 100 million people are currently learning French around the world.* • Different studies show that French is now the 3rd* or 5th* or 6th* most spoken language in the world! (by native and secondary speakers). • By 2050, French is expected to be the 3rd most spoken language in the world!* (following Mandarin and Spanish or English) • By 2025, French is predicted to become the most widely spoken mother tongue in Europe.* • French is the only language other than English that is taught and spoken on five continents.** • French is the 3rd most widely known language and 4th most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union.* • French is the 2nd most commonly taught language in American schools after Spanish.* (2017 report) • There are 900,000 French teachers in the world (2016).* • French is the 3rd most spoken language in Connecticut after English and Spanish (2015 census). • French is the 3rd* or 4th* most widely used language on the Internet. • French is the 2nd* or 3rd* most useful language for business after English. (Top 3: Mandarin, French, Arabic) • There are 37 'francophone' countries (23 in Africa) where French is either an official language (33 countries) or is spoken by at least one in five of the population.* (The most common languages proclaimed as “official” throughout the world are English, French, Arabic, and Spanish.*) The number of French speakers has increased by 25% from about 220 million in 2010 to 274 million in 2017.* The number of French speakers in the world has tripled over the last fifty years. -
Language Documentation and Description
Language Documentation and Description ISSN 1740-6234 ___________________________________________ This article appears in: Language Documentation and Description, vol 17. Editor: Peter K. Austin Countering the challenges of globalization faced by endangered languages of North Pakistan ZUBAIR TORWALI Cite this article: Torwali, Zubair. 2020. Countering the challenges of globalization faced by endangered languages of North Pakistan. In Peter K. Austin (ed.) Language Documentation and Description 17, 44- 65. London: EL Publishing. Link to this article: http://www.elpublishing.org/PID/181 This electronic version first published: July 2020 __________________________________________________ This article is published under a Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial). The licence permits users to use, reproduce, disseminate or display the article provided that the author is attributed as the original creator and that the reuse is restricted to non-commercial purposes i.e. research or educational use. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ______________________________________________________ EL Publishing For more EL Publishing articles and services: Website: http://www.elpublishing.org Submissions: http://www.elpublishing.org/submissions Countering the challenges of globalization faced by endangered languages of North Pakistan Zubair Torwali Independent Researcher Summary Indigenous communities living in the mountainous terrain and valleys of the region of Gilgit-Baltistan and upper Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northern -
The Socio Linguistic Situation and Language Policy of the Autonomous Region of Mountainous Badakhshan: the Case of the Tajik Language*
THE SOCIO LINGUISTIC SITUATION AND LANGUAGE POLICY OF THE AUTONOMOUS REGION OF MOUNTAINOUS BADAKHSHAN: THE CASE OF THE TAJIK LANGUAGE* Leila Dodykhudoeva Institute Of Linguistics, Russian Academy Of Sciences The paper deals with the problem of closely related languages of the Eastern and Western Iranian origin that coexist in a close neighbourhood in a rather compact area of one region of Republic Tajikistan. These are a group of "minor" Pamir languages and state language of Tajikistan - Tajik. The population of the Autonomous Region of Mountainous Badakhshan speaks different Pamir languages. They are: Shughni, Rushani, Khufi, Bartangi, Roshorvi, Sariqoli; Yazghulami; Wakhi; Ishkashimi. These languages have no script and written tradition and are used only as spoken languages in the region. The status of these languages and many other local linguemes is still discussed in Iranology. Nearly all Pamir languages to a certain extent can be called "endangered". Some of these languages, like Yazghulami, Roshorvi, Ishkashimi are included into "The Red Book " (UNESCO 1995) as "endangered". Some of them are extinct. Information on other idioms up to now is not available. These languages live in close cooperation and interaction with the state language of Tajikistan - Tajik. Almost all population of Badakhshan is multilingual or bilingual. The second language is official language of the state - Tajik. This language is used in Badakhshan as the language of education, press, media, and culture. This is the reason why this paper is focused on the status of Tajik language in Republic Tajikistan and particularly in Badakhshan. The Tajik literary language (its oral and written forms) has a long history and rich written traditions. -
Reimagine a F G H a N I S T a N
REIMAGINE A F G H A N I S T A N A N I N I T I A T I V E B Y R A I S I N A H O U S E REIMAGINE A F G H A N I S T A N INTRODUCTION . Afghanistan equals Culture, heritage, music, poet, spirituality, food & so much more. The country had witnessed continuous violence for more than 4 ................................................... decades & this has in turn overshadowed the rich cultural heritage possessed by the country, which has evolved through mellinnias of Cultural interaction & evolution. Reimagine Afghanistan as a digital magazine is an attempt by Raisina House to explore & portray that hidden side of Afghanistan, one that is almost always overlooked by the mainstream media, the side that is Humane. Afghanistan is rich in Cultural Heritage that has seen mellinnias of construction & destruction but has managed to evolve to the better through the ages. Issued as part of our vision project "Rejuvenate Afghanistan", the magazine is an attempt to change the existing perception of Afghanistan as a Country & a society bringing forward that there is more to the Country than meets the eye. So do join us in this journey to explore the People, lifestyle, Art, Food, Music of this Adventure called Afghanistan. C O N T E N T S P A G E 1 AFGHANISTAN COUNTRY PROFILE P A G E 2 - 4 PEOPLE ETHNICITY & LANGUAGE OF AFGHANISTAN P A G E 5 - 7 ART OF AFGHANISTAN P A G E 8 ARTISTS OF AFGHANISTAN P A G E 9 WOOD CARVING IN AFGHANISTAN P A G E 1 0 GLASS BLOWING IN AFGHANISTAN P A G E 1 1 CARPETS OF AFGHANISTAN P A G E 1 2 CERAMIC WARE OF AFGHANISTAN P A G E 1 3 - 1 4 FAMOUS RECIPES OF AFGHANISTAN P A G E 1 5 AFGHANI POETRY P A G E 1 6 ARCHITECTURE OF AFGHANISTAN P A G E 1 7 REIMAGINING AFGHANISTAN THROUGH CINEMA P A G E 1 8 AFGHANI MOVIE RECOMMENDATION A B O U T A F G H A N I S T A N Afghanistan Country Profile: The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is a landlocked country situated between the crossroads of Western, Central, and Southern Asia and is at the heart of the continent. -
Multilingualism As a Cohesion Factor in the European Culture
MULTILINGUALISM AS A COHESION FACTOR IN THE EUROPEAN CULTURE 1. EUROPEAN LANGUAGES Many European languages have their origins in three Indo-European language groups: the Romance languages from the Latin of the Roman Empire; the Germanic languages, whose original language was spoken in Southern Scandinavia, and the Slavic languages, derived from the Protoslav branch, which existed for over 3000 years before evolving into a variety of other languages during the period between the VI-IX centuries AD1. In general, all the current languages in Europe settled during the Middle Ages. Until then, the various languages had evolved rapidly because there was only a small percentage of people who could read and write. With so few people being able to read, it was normal for languages to be passed from generation to generation orally, making its evolutional process more expedient than what it currently is today. Romance languages were, and still to this day are spoken mainly in Southwestern Europe and in Romania and Moldova (Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian are Romance languages, as well as other languages that are not so widespread as Catalan or Sardinian). Germanic languages have their roots in Northern and Northwestern Europe, and in some areas of Central Europe; to this group belong German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic, as well as Frisian, which is considered a minority language. Slavic languages are spoken in Central Europe, the Balkans, Russia and West of Russia. Because the area suffered numerous invasions over several centuries, languages were strongly differentiated from each other, which is the reason for the current division into three distinct groups: Western, Eastern and Southern. -
English in South Africa: Effective Communication and the Policy Debate
ENGLISH IN SOUTH AFRICA: EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION AND THE POLICY DEBATE INAUGURAL LECTURE DELIVERED AT RHODES UNIVERSITY on 19 May 1993 by L.S. WRIGHT BA (Hons) (Rhodes), MA (Warwick), DPhil (Oxon) Director Institute for the Study of English in Africa GRAHAMSTOWN RHODES UNIVERSITY 1993 ENGLISH IN SOUTH AFRICA: EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION AND THE POLICY DEBATE INAUGURAL LECTURE DELIVERED AT RHODES UNIVERSITY on 19 May 1993 by L.S. WRIGHT BA (Hons) (Rhodes), MA (Warwick), DPhil (Oxon) Director Institute for the Study of English in Africa GRAHAMSTOWN RHODES UNIVERSITY 1993 First published in 1993 by Rhodes University Grahamstown South Africa ©PROF LS WRIGHT -1993 Laurence Wright English in South Africa: Effective Communication and the Policy Debate ISBN: 0-620-03155-7 No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Mr Vice Chancellor, my former teachers, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen: It is a special privilege to be asked to give an inaugural lecture before the University in which my undergraduate days were spent and which holds, as a result, a special place in my affections. At his own "Inaugural Address at Edinburgh" in 1866, Thomas Carlyle observed that "the true University of our days is a Collection of Books".1 This definition - beloved of university library committees worldwide - retains a certain validity even in these days of microfiche and e-mail, but it has never been remotely adequate. John Henry Newman supplied the counterpoise: . no book can convey the special spirit and delicate peculiarities of its subject with that rapidity and certainty which attend on the sympathy of mind with mind, through the eyes, the look, the accent and the manner. -
First Language Loss in Spanish-Speaking Children Patterns of Loss and Implications for Clinical Practice
Excerpted from Bilingual Language Development and Disorders in Spanish-English Speakers, Second Edition Edited by Brian A. Goldstein, Ph.D., CCC-SLP 10 First Language Loss in Spanish-Speaking Children Patterns of Loss and Implications for Clinical Practice Raquel T. Anderson One of the most salient linguistic characteristics of immigrant populations across the world is that in language contact situations, fi rst language (L1) skills will be aff ected. How these skills are changed in terms of structure and degree depends on a myriad of variables. Latino children living in the United States are not immune to this phenomenon, and practitioners coping with the complexities of assessing and treating children from dual language envi- ronments need to understand the phenomenon and how it is manifested in the children’s use of Spanish, which is oft en their L1. Not understanding language contact phenomena may result in incorrectly interpreting performance, thus increasing the potential for the misdiagnosis of language ability or disability. Th e purpose of this chapter is to describe Spanish-speaking children’s patterns of use of their L1 as they begin to learn to use their second language (L2), which, in the United States, is usually English. In particular, the phenomenon of fi rst language loss in children is described, with a particular emphasis on Spanish. By understanding what is known about L1 loss and how it is manifested in Spanish-speaking children, speech-language patholo- gists will be able to interpret L1 skill in the context of L1 loss and thus discern true disability in this population. -
The Pamir Languages
DEMO : Purchase from www.A-PDF.com to remove the watermark CHAPTER FOURTEEN A THE PAMIR LANGUAGES D. (Joy) I Edelman and Leila R. Dodykhudoeva 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Overview "Pamir languages" is the generalized conventional term fo r a group of languages that belong to the eastern branch of the Iranian language fa mily, and are spoken in the valleys of the western and southern Pamirs and adjacent regions: the Mountainous Badakhshan Autonomous Region (Tajik Viloya ti Ku histoni Badakhshon) of the Republic Tajikistan; the Badakhshan province in Afghanistan; parts of northern Pakistan (Chitral, Gilgit, Hunza); and parts of the Xinjiang-Uygur Autonomous Region of China. The Pamir languages constitute fo ur distinct genetic sub-groups that derive from several distinct proto-dialects of East Iranian origin (see also Chapters 14b and 15 on Shughn(an)i and Wakhi): I. "North Pamir" group (a) Old Wanji (extinct), relatively close to (b) Yazghulami, and (c) the Shughni Rushani group to the south of it (see Chapter 14b). 2. Ishkashimi group (a) Ishkashimi proper, (b) Sanglichi, (c) Zebaki (extinct). 3. Wa khi. 4. Also, owing to a series of features (a) Munji, (b) Yidgha. Extinct Sarghulami in Afghan Badakhshan is usually included. However, the very existence of this particular vernacular is doubtful. The material, described by Prof. I. I. Zarubin in the 1920s, could never be verified. It is based on the information from a speaker of one of the neighboring villages of Sarghulam, who called it la vz-i mazor 'the speech of mazar', presumably referring to the Afghan village of Sarghulam, which had such a shrine.