Ormuri

Ormuri (Ormuri: اورموړی Pashto: اورموړی) also known as Baraki, Ormur, Ormui or Bargista is an Eastern Iranian language spoken in the Waziristan region of Pakistan. It is primarily spoken by the Burki people in the town of Kaniguram in South Waziristan. A small number of speakers are also found in Logar, Afghanistan. The language belongs to the Eastern-Iranian language group. The extremely small number of speakers makes Ormuri an endangered language that is considered to be in a "threatened" state.

Ormuri is notable for its unusual sound inventory, which includes a voiceless alveolar trill that does not exist in the surrounding Pashto. Ormuri also has voiceless and voiced alveolo-palatal fricatives (the voiceless being contrastive with the more common voiceless palato-alveolar fricative), which also exist in the Waziristani dialect of Pashto, but could have been adopted from Ormuri due to its close proximity.

Classification

Ormuri is classified under the Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Iranian, Eastern Iranian, Southeastern Iranian, and Ormuri-Parachi language groups.

Language status

According to the Endangered Languages Project, the language of Ormuri is highly threatened. The language is used for face-to-face communication, however it is losing users.

History

The Ormuri language is used by the Ormur/Baraki tribe in parts of the Kaniguram Valley in Waziristan, Pakistan. The language is also used in a small part of Logar Province, Afghanistan.

Ormuri tribe

An alternate name used by the Ormur people is Baraki. It is believed that there were eight to ten thousand families in the Logar area at the beginning of the 19th century and approximately four to five hundred families in Kaniguram at the beginning of the 20th century. The Ormur tribe does not occupy an ethnically homogeneous territory. In Afghanistan, the Ormur people live in mixed communities with both Tajiks and Pashtun. Whereas, in Pakistan, the Ormur people live only with the Pashtuns.

Early history of the tribe can be traced in Herodotus' book. The Persian Emperor Darius Hystaspes; Governor of Egypt conquered the Greek colonies of Barca and Cyrene in Libya and took them to Egypt on their return from expedition. At this time, the King returned from his Scythian campaign to his capital, Susa. The Barakis were given a village in Bactria to live in, later named Barke. After two thousand three hundred and fifty years, the village was still inhabited in 1891 within the same territory.

Ormuri language

The name 'Ormur' (orməṛ) is originally derived from Pashto (meaning fire). The first man to have made mention of the Baraki language was Babar, in his book Baburnama. Ormuri, also called Birki at the time was one of the eleven to twelve tongues that were observed by Babar while in the region of Kabul. It is known that many of the Ormuri speakers are at least bilingual or trilingual, speaking other tribal languages such as Pashto, Persian, Dari, or Kaboli

Pir Roshan (Bayazid Khan) was one of the first known Pashto prose writers and composers of Pashto alphabets who used several Ormuri words in his book "Khairul-Bayan." A few of the words that were used within his book were Nalattti (Pigs), Nmandzak of Mazdak (Mosque), Teshtan (Owner), Burghu (flout), Haramunai (ill-born), etc.

Research

File:Ormuri-Research.jpg

In Pashto: A historical examination of Ormuri

Hikmatyar Burki has also done an MPhil on Ormuri and published his work through the Pashto Academy.

Geographic distribution

Ormuri is spoken primarily in the town of Kaniguram in South Waziristan, Pakistan. A small population also speaks it in the town of Baraki Barak in Logar Province, Baraki area in Kabul Afghanistan. The language is sustained by nearly fifty adherents in Afghanistan and around five to six thousand speakers in Pakistan

File:Lowgar districts.png

Districts of Logar province. This image does not include Azra district, located to the east of Khoshi and Mohammad Agha districts.

File:FATA (8).jpg

North (purple) and South (blue) Waziristan and surrounding Federally Administered Tribal Areas and provinces

Dialects

There are two dialects of Ormuri; one is spoken in Kaniguram, Waziristan, which is the more archaic dialect, and the other one in Baraki-Barak, Logar. The Kaniguram dialect is not understood in Baraki-Barak. The linguist Georg Morgenstierne wrote: Template:Quote

The dialect of Kaniguram is currently strong, spoken by a relatively prosperous community of Ormur in an isolated part of the rugged Waziristan hills. However, the position of the dialect of Baraki Barak is not strong. Morgenstierne wrote he was told that:Template:Quote

Lexical differences

Table 1: Lexical differences in Ormuri

	Logar	Kaniguram
'blind'	kor	wond
'soft'	narm	nořh
'fox'	roba	rawas
'flea'	kayk	řak
'shepherd'	čopan	šwān
'comb'	šåná	šhak(k)
'place'	jåy	jikak
'to fly'	parók	buryék

Differences in phonetic forms

Table 2: Differences in the phonetic form of vowels in Ormuri

	Logar	Kaniguram
'to go'	tsok	tsek, tsyek
'one'	še	sa
'house'	ner	nar
'dry'	wuk	wyok
'water'	wok	wak
'to sit'	nóstok	nástak

The vowel system of Ormuri is characterized as heterogenous. The language consists of a subsystem of vowels that found native within Ormuri vocabulary, as well as a subsystem of vowels that is considered "borrowed vocabulary." The differences seen between the Logar and Kaniguram dialects are mainly based on the quality of vowels instead of the quantity.

The system is based on six phonemes: i, e, a, å, o, u.

Table 3: Differences in the phonetic form of consonants in Ormuri

	Logar	Kaniguram
'one'	še	sa
'three'	šo	ři
'six'	xo	ša
'above'	pa-bega	pa-beža
'snow'	ɣoš	ɣoř

The consonant system varies slightly between both the dialects of Kaniguram and Logar. The Logar native consonant system contains 25 phonemes, while the Kaniguram system has 27.

Phonology

Consonants

Source:

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Retroflex	Post-alv./ Palatal	Velar	Uvular		Glottal
							plain	labialised
Nasal		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link)
Stop	voiceless	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link)		Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link)
	voiced	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link)		Template:IPA link
Affricate	voiceless		Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
	voiced		Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Fricative	voiceless	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link)1	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link2	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link1	Template:IPA link
	voiced	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link)1	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link2	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link1
Approximant			Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Tap/Trill	plain		Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA link)
	fricative		Template:IPAlink1

1. Only in Kaniguram.
2. Only in Logar.

/Template:IPA link/ and /Template:IPA link/ are uncommon in native vocabulary. In both dialects free variation of dental and postalveolar affricates is widespread. /Template:IPAlink/ usually corresponds to /Template:IPA link/ in Logar.

Ľubomír (2013) claims there is a voiceless retroflex non-sibilant fricative [ɻ̊˔].

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Mid	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Open		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link1	Template:IPA link2

1. Only in Kaniguram.
2. Only in Logar.

Syllabic Patterns

Proper Ormuri words will have the following syllabic patterns: V, VC, CV, CCV, (C)VCC, CVC, CCVC, CCVCC. Both dialects from Kaniguram and Logar have similar syllabic structure.

Examples

• a- this
• un/wun- so much
• pe- father
• gri- mountain
• åxt- eight
• måx- we
• spok- dog
• breš- burn
• broxt- burned
• wroxt- beard

At the end of certain words CC occurs as spirant/sonant + occlusive. When separating most words into syllables, a medial CC will be divided:

• al-gox-tok- to fall
• kir-ží- hen
• er-zåk- to come

Morphology

The language has undergone extensive change in comparison to its ancestral self. For nominal morphology (nouns, adjectives, and pronouns), aspects of the Kaniguram dialect of grammatical gender has completely been lost in the Logar. In terms of the verbal morphology, there is a greater variety of conjugations of modal and tense-aspect forms based on the present-tense stem. There is also a distinction made between masculine and feminine words based on the past-tense system. Finally, there is a greater number of distinctions between within the system of tense-aspect forms and there are different types of ergative constructions.

There is a developed system of noun and verb inflections. Nominal parts of speech contains: Three numbers (singular, dual, and plural), three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and the verb has two voices (active and middle). There is the elimination of the category of case (loss in nouns, adjectives, numerals, and certain pronouns). There is also a complete loss of the category of gender, varying on the dialect (Complete loss in Logar and rudimentary masculine and feminine forms remain in Kaniguram). In Logar most original Ormuri nouns and adjectives have a simple stem ending in a consonant and a few nouns end in unstressed (or rarely stressed) -a or -i. Whereas in Kaniguram, the stem usually ends in a consonant, but both nouns and adjectives may end in -a or -i.

Orthography

Ormuri uses the Pashto script with the additional letters /r̝/ , /ʑ/ and /ɕ/  :

Name	IPA	Transliteration	Contextual forms			Isolated	Latin	Unicode(Hex)
	Symbol		Final	Medial	Initial
alif	Template:IPAblink	ā			آ,	,	Ā ā	U+0627, U+0622
be	Template:IPAblink	b					B b	U+0628
pe	Template:IPAblink	p					P p	U+067E
te	Template:IPAblink	t					T t	U+062A
ṭe	[ʈ]	ṭ					Ṭ ṭ	U+067C
se	Template:IPAblink	s					S s	U+062B
jim	[d͡ʒ]	j					J j	U+062C
če	[t͡ʃ]	č					Č č	U+0686
he	Template:IPAblink3	h					H h	U+062D
xe	Template:IPAblink	x					X x	U+062E
tse	[t͡s]	ts					Ts ts	U+0685
dzim	[d͡z]	dz					Dz dz	U+0681
dāl	Template:IPAblink	d					D d	U+062F
ḍāl	[ɖ]	ḍ					Ḍ ḍ	U+0689
zāl	Template:IPAblink	z					Z z	U+0630
re	Template:IPAblink	r					R r	U+0631
ře	Template:IPAblink	ř					Ř ř	U+0692
ṛe	Template:IPAblink	ṛ					Ṛ ṛ	U+0693
ze	Template:IPAblink	z					Z z	U+0632
že	Template:IPAblink	ž					Ž ž	U+0698
źe	[ʑ]	ź					Ź ź	U+076B
sin	Template:IPAblink	s					S s	U+0633
šin	Template:IPAblink	š					Š š	U+0634
śin	[ɕ]	ś					Ś ś	U+076D
swād	Template:IPAblink	s					S s	U+0635
zwād	Template:IPAblink	z					Z z	U+0636
twe	Template:IPAblink	t					T t	U+0637
zwe	Template:IPAblink	z					Z z	U+0638
ayn	Template:IPAblink	ā					Ā ā	U+0639
ğayn	Template:IPAblink	ğ					Ğ ğ	U+063A
fe	Template:IPAblink	f					F f	U+0641
qāp	Template:IPAblink / Template:IPAblink	q					Q q	U+0642
kāp	Template:IPAblink	k					K k	U+06A9
gāp	Template:IPAblink	g					G g	U+06AB
lām	Template:IPAblink	l					L l	U+0644
mim	Template:IPAblink	m					M m	U+0645
nun	Template:IPAblink	n					N n	U+0646
ṇun	Template:IPAblink	ṇ					Ṇ ṇ	U+06BC
nūn ğunna	[ ̃]	̃ (over vowel)					N n	U+06BA
wāw	Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink	w, u, o					W w, U u, O o	U+0648
he	Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink	h, a					H h, A a	U+0647
kajīra he	Template:IPAblink	ə				ۀ	Ə ə	U+06C0
ye	Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink	y, i					Y y, I i	U+064A
ye	Template:IPAblink	e					E e	U+06D0
ye	, Template:IPAblink	ay, y		ـ	ـ		Ay ay, Y y	U+06CC
ye		əi					Əi əi, Y y	U+0626

Examples

"Log." will represent examples from the Ormuri dialect of Logar and "Kan." will be used to signify the Kaniguram dialect of Ormuri

• Log.: afo kåbol-ki altsok → "He went off to Kabul"
• Log.: a-saṛay dzok šuk → "(This) man has been beaten"
• Log.: xodåay-an bad-e badtarin såton → "O God, keep us from misfortune" (literal translation: "From the very worst")
• Kan.: a-nar by pa mun ǰoṛawak sa → "The house is being built by me"
• Kan.: sabā su az kābul-ki tsom → "Tomorrow I shall probably go to Kabul"
• Kan.: tsami a-dāru irwar! → "Bring my eye drops"

Resources

• Ormuri Primer
• Qawaid e Bargistā (in Hindustani)
• The Ormuri Language in Past and Present
• Linguistic Survey of India (Volume 10): Ormuri at pages 123 to 325
• Indo-Iranian Frontier Languages (Volume 1): Parachi and Ormuri
• Clitics of Ormuri

See also

• Ormur
• Waziri Pashto
• Parachi language
• Waneci
• Burki
• Baraki
• Logar Province
• Kaniguram

External links

• Ormuri at The Endangered Languages Project
• Ormuri and Bargista Language
• Ormuri and Parachi Language Analysis by Georg Morgenstierne
• Ormuri Phonetics
• Ormuri AlphabetTemplate:Category handler by Rozi Khan Burki
• Ormuri History and Origin by The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland
• Word list of terms in Ormuri and other languages