Kanjari language

Kanjari (also known as Kangar Bhat, Kangri, Kuchbandhi or "the Gypsy language") is an Indo-Aryan language associated with the Kanjar people of India and Pakistan. Kanjari is spoken in Punjab and parts of Balochistan in Pakistan, and Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan in India. UNESCO classifies Kanjari as an endangered language.

Syntax

George Abraham Grierson noted several grammatical features for Kanjari in the first Linguistic Survey of India:

• The final "ō" of adjectives is usually kept before an inflected noun, which suggests that adjectives are not inflected and that gender is weak. For example, tēro naukrÄ« ("thy service").
• Some pronouns are similar to Rajasthani languages, such as the demonstrative pronouns jō and jÄ«. However, other pronouns are similar to the Dravidian languages, such as Å«r ("he") compared to Tamil Ä«r and Gondi ōr.
• Overall, verb conjugations and words "broadly agree" with the patterns of Eastern Rajasthani languages, but some characteristics point to a "certain Dravidian element" being present in Kanjari.

Vocabulary

References