Dameli language

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Dameli is a language spoken by less than 5,000 people in the remote valley of Damil-Nisar, in the Chitral District of the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan.

Damil-Nisar is about ten miles south of Drosh on the East Side of the Chitral River. Damil-Nisar leads to a mountain pass which crosses the high Hindu Raj Mountains and could form an important link from Chitral to Dir in Pakistan, but is rarely used because the people of Damil are regarded as wild and untamed and much given to robbing and killing passing travelers, or so they say.

The Dameli Language has not been given study by serious linguists, except that it is mentioned by George Morgenstierne (1926) and Kendall Decker (1992). It is classified as a Dardic Language but this is more of a geographical classification than a linguistic one.

Dameli is believed to be a dying language, as most speakers are converting to the more widely spoken Khowar language.

The Norwegian Linguist [Georg Morgenstierne] wrote that Chitral is the area of the greatest linguistic diversity in the world. Although Khowar is the predominant language of Chitral, more than ten other languages are spoken here. These include Kalasha-mun, Palula, Dameli, Gawar-Bati, Nuristani, Yidgha, Burushaski, Gujar, Wakhi, Kyrgyz, Persian and Pashto. Since many of these languages have no written form, letters are usually written in Urdu or Persian.

Books

Khowar English Dictionary (by Mohammad Ismail Sloan, 1981) ISBN 0923891153 published in Pakistan, reprinted in 2006

Decker, Kendall D. (1992) Languages of Chitral ISBN 9698023151 http://www.ethnologue.com/show_work.asp?id=32850

Morgenstierne, Georg (1926) Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan. Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, Serie C I-2. Oslo.

External links

[Dardic Languages of Chitral]

http://www.ling.su.se/ASV/forskning.html#Dameli

[History of Chitral]

[Nuristan: Hidden Land of the Hindu Kush]

[Dameli, A Language of Pakistan]

Indo-Iranian languages
Indo-Aryan	Varieties of Sanskrit: Vedic Sanskrit - Classical Sanskrit \| Angika \| Assamese \| Bengali \| Bhojpuri \| Dhivehi \| Dogri \| Gujarati \| Hindi \| Hindustani \| Konkani \| Magadhi \| Mahl \| Maithili \| Marathi \| Nepali \| Oriya \| Pāli \| Prakrit \| Punjabi \| Romani \| Sindhi \| Sinhala \| Urdu
Iranian languages>Iranian	Avestan \| Varieties of Persian: Old Persian - Middle Persion (Pahlavi) - Modern Persian (Fārsī) - Darī (Afghanistan) - Tājikī \| Bactrian \| Balochi \| Dari (Zoroastrianism) \| Gilaki \| Kurdish \| Mazandarani \| Ossetic \| Pamiri \| Pashto \| Saka \| Scythian \| Sogdian \| Talysh \| Tat \| Yagnobi
Dardic languages>Dardic	Dameli \| Domaaki \| Gawar-Bati \| Kalasha \| Kashmiri \| Khowar \| Kohistani \| Nangalami \| Pashayi \| Palula \| Shina \| Shumashti
Nuristani languages>Nuristani	Ashkun \| Kamviri \| Kati \| Prasuni \| Tregami \| Waigali

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