Northeastern Katë dialect
Kamkata-vari dialect of Afghanistan and Pakistan
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.
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.
01Innovations
According to Halfmann (2024), the primary innovations of the Northeastern dialect include secondary vowel length from monophthongization of vowel + v, a progressive suffix -t-, and epenthesis of original *tr and *dr clusters.
02Orthography
In August 2022, Pakistani linguist, Rehmat Aziz Chitrali proposed a keyboard to Khowar Academy, Chitral.
03History
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. Most speakers in Pakistan speak either Pashto or Khowar as a second language. Many native speakers often marry the minority Pashtuns in the area.
04Phonology
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
- Mid /ə/ can be heard as a close central [ɨ].
05Vocabulary
Pronouns
| Person | Direct | Oblique | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | sg. | ũ, ũċ | ĩ, yẽ |
| pl. | imú | ||
| 2nd | sg. | tyu | tu |
| pl. | šo | ||
Numbers
- e, ev
- dyu
- tëre
- štëvó
- puč
- ṣu
- sut
- uṣṭ
- nu
- duċ
- yaníċ
- diċ
- tëríċ
- šturéċ
- pčiċ
- ṣeċ
- stiċ
- ṣṭiċ
- neċ
- vëċë́
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Northeastern Katë dialect”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
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