Northeastern Katë dialect

Northeastern Katë is a dialect of the Katë language spoken by the Kata in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It also includes the so-called Shekhani dialect spoken in Chitral district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.^[3]

Northeastern Katë
Native to	Afghanistan, Pakistan
Region	Nuristan, Kunar, Chitral
Native speakers	1,500 (Pakistani speakers only) (2003)[1][2]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Nuristani Katë Northeastern Katë
Writing system	Arabic script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bsh
Glottolog	kati1270

There are several subdialects spoken in the upper Landai Sin Valley. It is also spoken in Chitral District, in Gobor and the upper Bumboret Valley in Pakistan.

Innovations

According to Halfmann (2024), the primary innovations of the Northeastern dialect include secondary vowel length from monophthongization of vowel + v and a progressive suffix -t-.

Orthography

In August 2022, Pakistani linguist, Rehmat Aziz Chitrali proposed a keyboard to Khowar Academy, Chitral.^[4]

History

Speakers of Eastern Katë dialects migrated from Kamdesh in Nuristan in modern-day Afghanistan to Lutkuh Valley in Chitrali Princely State in British Raj during the 19th century.^[5] Most speakers in Pakistan speak either Pashto or Khowar as a second language. Many native speakers often marry the minority Pashtuns in the area.^[6]

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Palato- alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless	p	t		ʈ		k
	voiced	b	d		ɖ		ɡ
Affricate	voiceless		t͡s	t͡ʃ	t͡ʂ	t͡ɕ
	voiced			d͡ʒ	d͡ʐ
Fricative	voiceless	(f)	s	ʃ	ʂ	ɕ	(x)	h
	voiced	v	z	(ʒ)	ʐ	ʑ	(ɣ)
Nasal		m	n		ɳ		ŋ
Tap			ɾ		(ɽ)
Approximant	lateral		l
	central				ɻ	(j)

• Sounds /ʒ ɽ ɣ/ occur from neighboring languages. /f x/ are borrowed from loanwords mainly from Khowar or Yidgha.
• /ʈ/ can also be heard as an allophone [ɽ].
• [j] is heard as an allophone of /i/.
• /v/ can also be heard as bilabial [β] or a labial approximant [w].

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ə	u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

• Mid /ə/ can be heard as a close central [ɨ].

Vocabulary

Pronouns

Person		Direct	Oblique
1st	sg.	ũ, ũċ	ĩ, yẽ
	pl.	imú
2nd	sg.	tyu	tu
	pl.	šo

Numbers

1. e, ev
2. dyu
3. tëre
4. štëvó
5. puč
6. ṣu
7. sut
8. uṣṭ
9. nu
10. duċ
11. yaníċ
12. diċ
13. tëríċ
14. šturéċ
15. pčiċ
16. ṣeċ
17. stiċ
18. ṣṭiċ
19. neċ
20. vëċë́

Further reading

• Halfmann, Jakob (2024). A Grammatical Description of the Katë Language (Nuristani) (PhD thesis). Universität zu Köln.