Nuristani Kalasha ('), also known as Waigali, is a Nuristani language spoken by about 10,000 people in the Nuristan Province of Afghanistan. The native name is Kalaá¹£a-alâ 'Kalasha-language'. "Waigali" refers to the dialect of the Väi people of the upper part of the Waigal Valley, centered on the town of Waigal, which is distinct from the dialect of the ÃÂima-Nià ¡ei people who inhabit the lower valley. The word 'Kalasha' is the native ethnonym for all the speakers of the southern Nuristani languages.
Nuristani Kalasha belongs to the Indo-European language family, and is in the Nuristani group of the Indo-Iranian branch. It is closely related to Zemiaki and to Tregami, the lexical similarity with the latter being approximately 76% to 80%.
It shares its name with the Indo-Aryan Kalasha language (Kalaá¹£a-mun), spoken in Pakistan's southern Chitral District, but the two languages belong to different branches of Indo-Iranian. Speakers of Nuristani Kalasha (Kalaá¹£a-alâ) are sometimes called "Red Kalasha", while the speakers of Indo-Aryan Kalasha are called âÂÂBlack Kalasha.â The Kalash people are very close to the Nuristani people in terms of culture and historic religion. According to linguist Richard Strand the Kalasha of Chitral apparently adopted the name of the Nuristani Kalasha, who at some unknown time had extended their influence into the region of southern Chitral.
The name Kalasha-ala comes from Kalaṣa , a term denoting the Kalash people, which also covers the distantly related Indo-Aryan Kalasha language (Kalaṣa-mun), hence the language is called "Nuristani Kalasha". The name "Waigali" comes from Vägal < Vâigal , from Vä < Vâi "Vai" and gal "valley".
According to linguist Richard Strand, Nuristani Kalasha contains several dialects spoken among the Väi, Vai, or Vä peoples, the ÃÂima-Nià ¡ei people, and the Vântä people. Within the Väi, the Väi-alâ, Ameà ¡-alâ, and áºÂönÃÂi-alâ subdialects are spoken. Among the ÃÂima-Nià ¡ei, the Nià ¡ei-alâ and ÃÂimi-alâ subdialects are spoken. The exact dialect of the Vântä is unclear, but is most probably Nià ¡ei-alâ. For this article, most cited forms will be based on the Nià ¡ei dialect (Nià ¡ei-alâ).
Symbols in brackets are foreign sounds.
Nuristani Kalasha is a head-final SOV language, with the verb coming at the end of the clause in main and subordinate clauses, imperatives, and questions.
Subordination often takes the form of absolute participles, and multiple absolutes can be inserted between the subject and the main verb of the clause, e á¹£era manaá¹£ (1) lapa ka, (2) bÃÂá¹Âia-kana zora dati, (3) a-á¹£ÃÂyw tÃÂy, berancãey "A blind man, (1) having made a torch, having poured milk in a pot, having put it on his head, went out", e.g.. But there are also subordinate clause constructions that stand outside the main clause. There are a number of dedicated subordinating and coordinating conjunctions, and a number of particles and postpositions can also be used with clauses as subordinators.
Subjects and objects are inflected in a split ergative system:
Kalasha-ala nouns are marked for case (direct, oblique, instrumental, locative, and vocative) and sometimes for number (singular or plural).
The case endings change slightly in form depending on the declension of the noun to which they are attached, usually by merging with the final vowel of the stem. A genitive is made by attaching -ba to the oblique.
Only oblique and vocative nouns have unique fusional forms for the singular and plural. For some nouns, however, a plural may be made by adding a suffix to the stem:
For relationships between people, there is some possessive morphology in addition to the genitive. When the possessor is 2nd person (singular or plural) the other person is marked with an -w, tuba sosow "your sister", and when the possessor is 3rd person the other person is marked with -s, yoma sosas "his sister", yema sosas "their sister". This suffix comes between the noun and any case and number marking, ameba sos-kina "your sisters". 1st person possessives have no suffix.
Noun declensions, unlike adjective and verb endings, never vary based on gender.
There are two basic stems for verbs from which are built a number of conjugated tense/aspect/moods - the present stem is used to make not only presents but futures, imperfects, imperatives, and subjunctives; the preterite stem is used to make not only the preterite, but the perfect and pluperfect as well as some futures (likely originally future perfects). In addition there are a few non-finite verb forms using one of the two stems. There is a morphological causative with its own stem, typically built off the present stem.
Conjugated verb forms reflect the person and number and, in some tenses, sex-based gender of their subjects.
Some adjectives are inflected for gender, with -a for masculines and -i for feminines. Adjectives can be used on their own as nouns, and can be inflected for case then, but when being used to modify nouns they have no case marking.
Like in many languages of the area, the number system is base twenty.
Compound numbers are formed by multiplying twenties with an oblique -e and then adding the remainder, e.g. wià ¡e yÃÂà ¡ "31"; dü-wià ¡e ew "41". Curiously, the common word for "400", azÃÂr, is borrowed from the Persian word hazÃÂr "thousand", and ÃÂatàsawa from the Pashto sawa "hundred" is also used.
Numbers are often suffixed with -i when not accompanied by count nouns, possibly from ...ye "and...". For some odd multiples of 10, the doà ¡ seems to require an -i, so dü-wià ¡e doà ¡i "50" and tre-wià ¡e doà ¡i "70".
There is a multiplicative suffix -ar (e-ar "once", ÃÂatÃÂ-ar "four times") and a distributive made by reduplication of the first consonant (dadü "per two", papà ©Ã "per five", wawoṣṠ"per eight"; nane "each" is irregular).
The only attested ordinals are the Persian loanwords awal "first" and düum "second".