Introductory Pages - An Introduction to Spoken Kashmiri

An Introduction to Spoken Kashmiri
by Braj B. Kachru
3. Siraji : This is spoken in the town of Doda on the River Chinab. Whether or not it is a
dialect of Kashmiri is still debated. Grierson thinks that it can, with almost “equal
correctness, be classed as a dialect of Kashmiri... because it possesses certain Dardic
characteristics which are absent in Western Pahari. [11]
4. Rāmbani: This is spoken in a small area that lies between Srinagar and Jammu. It is a
mixture of Siraji and Dogri, and shares features with both Kashmiri and Dogri.
In the literature, the Kashmiri Speech Community has traditionally been divided into the
following area-defined dialects:
(a) mara:z (in the southern and southeastern region),
(b) kamra:z (in the northern and northwestern region), and
(c) yamra:z (in Srinagar and some of its surrounding areas).
On the basis of this grouping, it is believed that the Kashmiri spoken in the mara:z area is highly
Sanskritized and the variety spoken in the kamra:z area has had a deep Dardic influence. Note
that further research on the dialect situation of Kashmiri may show that, in addition to village
dialects (and perhaps religious dialects), Kashtawari is the only dialect of Kashmiri outside of the
valley, and that the other dialects discussed above are only partially influenced by Kashmiri,
since they are spoken in transition zones.
Sanskritized and Persianized Dialects
In earlier and current literature, it has been claimed that in terms of the users there are two
dialects of Kashmiri: Hindu Kashmiri, and Muslim Kashmiri [12] The evidence presented for
this religious dichotomy is that Hindu Kashmiri has borrowings from Sanskrit sources, and
Muslim Kashimri has borrowings from Persian (and Arabic) sources. It turns out that the
situation is not as clear cut as has been presented by Grierson and Zinda Koul ‘Masterji’, for
example. The religious dichotomy applies, to some extent, to Srinagar Kashmiri, but it presents
an erroneous picture of the overall dialect situation of the language. We shall, therefore, use
rather neutral terms, i.e., Sanskritized Kashmiri (SK) and Persianized Kashmiri (PK).
The differences at the phonetic/phonological levels between the two communities may be
explained in terms of distribution and frequency of certain phonemes. The sub-system of
borrowed phonological features also is shared by the educated speakers of the two communities
(e.g., /f/ and /q/). The other differences are mainly lexical and, in a very few cases,
morphological. Lexically, SK has borrowed from Sanskrit sources and PK from Persian and
Arabic sources. This aspect of Kashmiri, however, needs further research.
In village Kashmiri, the religion-marking phonetic/phonological and morphological features
merge into one, though in Srinagar Kashmiri, as stated earlier, they mark the two communities as
separate. In recent years, with the spread of education, the religious differences have been slowly
disappearing. In earlier studies, the observations made on the religious dialects of Kashmiri are
mainly based on lexical evidence, and whatever phonetic/phonblogical evidence is presented is
from Srinagar Kashmiri. Consider, for example, the sound alternations in the following section.
© 2006 Braj B. Kachru (http://kachru.com) 4
http://koshur.org/SpokenKashmiri