Social:Inku language

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Short description: Indo-Aryan language of Afghanistan
Inku
Native toAfghanistan
RegionVarious
Ethnicity"Jats" (Jalali, Pikraj, Shadibaz, Vangawala)
Extinctafter 1990s
Indo-European
Language codes
ISO 639-3jat
Glottologjaka1245[1]

Inku is a Punjabi dialect, spoken, throughout Afghanistan by four of the country's itinerant communities: the Jalali, the Pikraj, the Shadibaz and the Vangawala. Itinerant communities in Afghanistan, whether Inku-speaking or not, are locally known as "Jats" (not to be confused with the Jats of India and Pakistan), a term which is not a self-designation of the groups but rather a collective, often pejorative name given by outsiders.[2] The reference work Ethnologue has an entry for what could be this language, but under the name Jakati (with the corresponding ISO 639-3 code jat), but that entry is at least partly erroneous.[3]

Each of the four groups speaks a variety with slight differences compared to the others.[4] According to their local tradition, their ancestors migrated in the 19th century from the Dera Ismail Khan and Dera Ghazi Khan regions of present-day Pakistan.[5] Such an origin suggests that Inku may be related to the Derawali dialect of Punjabi, spoken there,[6] though nothing is conclusively known.[7]

The total population of the four Inku-speaking groups was estimated to be 30,000 as of the end of the 2010.[8] There is no reliable information about their present state, though it is unlikely that many have survived the subsequent upheavals in the country,[2] and according to the entry in Ethnologue, which however may not necessarily refer to this language,[3] the last speakers "probably survived into the 2020s".[9]

Linguistic materials about the varieties spoken by the Shadibaz, Vangawala and Pikraj were collected by Aparna Rao in the 1970s, but they have not been published or analysed yet.[4]

Example text

The following is an extract of a text narrated in 1978 by a man of the Chenarkhel subgroup of the Vangawala:[10] Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

References

  1. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds (2017). "Inku". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. http://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/jaka1245. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Hanifi 2012.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Glottolog 4.6.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Rao 1995, p. 82.
  5. ↑ Rao 1986, p. 266.
  6. ↑ Rao 1986, p. 267.
  7. ↑ Rao 1995.
  8. ↑ Rao 1986, pp. 267–71.
  9. ↑ Eberhard, Simons & Fennig 2019.
  10. ↑ Rao 1995, p. 85.

Bibliography

Template:Punjabi varieties