Kashmiri (?????, ????? Koshur) is a Dardic language spoken primarily in the valley of Kashmir, a region situated in the Indian state Jammu and Kashmir.^[1][2][3] It has about 4,391,000 speakers in India. Most of the 105,000 speakers or so in Pakistan are Immigrants from the Kashmir Valley and include only a few speakers residing in border villages in Neelum District. Kashmiri belongs to the geographical linguistic sub-grouping called Dardic part of the Indo-European Language Family.^[4] It is one of the 23 scheduled languages of India.^[5]

Kashmiri is an official language of Jammu and Kashmir, along with Urdu, and is also one of the national languages of India. Some Kashmiri speakers use English or Urdu as a second language.^[6] In the past few decades, Kashmiri was introduced as a subject at the university and the colleges of the valley. At present, attempts are on for inclusion of Kashmiri in school curriculum, although Urdu is much more common as a medium of instruction. There is a minor variability of Kashmiri spoken by Muslims and Hindus. Muslims tend to use Arabic words while Hindus use Sanskrit linked words. For example the word Nar (Fire)is used by a Muslim while a traditional Hindu will use the word Agun (Fire).

Literature

In 1919 George Abraham Grierson wrote that ?Kashmiri is the only one of the Dardic languages that has a literature?. Kashmiri literature dates back to over 750 years, this is, more-or-less, the age of many a modern literature including English.

Writing system

Kashmiri has remained a spoken language up to the present times, though some manuscripts were written in the past in the Sharada script, and then in Perso-Arabic script. Kashmiri is written almost entirely in the Perso-Arabic script (with some modifications), while Kashmiri Hindu communities are attempting to promote a script based upon Devanagari script, especially on the internet - though such efforts have been almost exclusively amongst Hindus, with little to no impact on the wider Kashmiri Muslim community^[7]. Among Kashmiri speakers outside of Kashmir, Muslims tend to write in either Urdu, or in Kashmiri using the Urdu script. The smaller Kashmiri Hindu community tends to use Hindi and the Devanagari script in the same manner. Among languages written in the Perso-Arabic script, Kashmiri is one of the very few which regularly indicates all vowel sounds.^[8]

Grammar

Kashmiri, like English, follows Subject Verb Object word order.^[9]

There are four cases in Kashmiri: nominative, genitive, and two oblique cases.^[10]

References

Kashif Shaffique (Muzaffarabad Azad Kashmir)

1. ↑
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5. ↑
6. ↑
7. ↑ http://www.koausa.org/Languages/devan1.html
8. ↑
9. ↑
10. ↑

See also

• Kashmiri literature
• List of topics on the land and the people of ?Jammu and Kashmir?
• List of Kashmiri poets
• Neab International Kashmiri Magazine

External links

• Grierson, George Abraham. A Dictionary of the Kashmiri Language. Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1932.
• ''Lexical Borrowings in Kashmiri'' by Ashok K KoulDelhi: Indian Institute of Language Studies,2008.
• ''Linguistic Studies in Kashmiri'' by Omkar N Koul New Delhi: Bahri Publications, 1977.
• ''An Intensive Course in Kashmiri'' by Omkar N Koul Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages, 1985.
• ''An Intermediate Course in Kashmiri'' by Omkar N. Koul Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages, 1994.
• ''Kashmiri Newspaper Reader'' by Omkar N Koul. Springfield: Dunwoody Press, 2008.
• ''Aspects of Kashmiri Linguistics'' edited by Omkar N Koul and Peter Edwin Hook New Delhi: Bahri Publications, 1984.
• ''Topics in Kashmiri Linguistics'' edited by by Omkar N Koul and Kashi Wali. New Delhi: Creative Books, 2002.
• ''Modern Kashmiri Grammar'' by Omkar N Koul and Kashi Wali. Springfield: Dunwoody Press, 2006.
• Kashmir history & Culture
• ''Kashmiri: A Cognitive-Descriptive Grammar'' by Kashi Wali and Omkar N Koul London: Routledge 1997.
• ''Kashmiri-English Dictionary for Second Language Learners'' by Omkar N. Koul, S. N. Raina and R. K. Bhat Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages, 2000.
• An Introduction to Spoken Kashmiri
• Koshur: An Introduction to Spoken Kasmiri
• Basic words and phrases in Kashmiri language
• Kashmiri literary magazine
• Kashmiri

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