Western Katë dialect
Katë dialect of Afghanistan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Western Katë is a dialect of the Katë language spoken by the Kata in parts of Afghanistan. The most used alternative names are Kata-vari or Kati.
| Western Katë | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Afghanistan |
| Region | Nuristan, Kunar |
Native speakers | 140,000 (2017)[1] |
| Arabic script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | bsh |
| Glottolog | kati1270 |
Together with the Northeastern dialect, it is spoken by approximately 40,000 people (mostly in Afghanistan, just over 3,700 in Pakistan), and its speakers are Muslim. Literacy rates are low: below 1% for people who have it as a first language, and between 15% and 25% for people who have it as a second language.
There are several subdialects spoken in the Ramgal, Kulam, Ktivi and Paruk valleys of Nuristan.
Innovations
According to Halfmann (2024), the primary innovations of the Western dialect include loss of nasalization, a progressive suffix -n-, and a past copula stem st-.
Phonology
Consonants
- Sounds /ʒ ɽ ɣ/ occur from neighboring languages. /f x/ are borrowed from loanwords.
- /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].
Vocabulary
Pronouns
| Person | Direct | Oblique | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | sg. | vúze, vúzë (Ktivi) | ye, yéme |
| pl. | yimó, yimú (Ktivi) | ||
| 2nd | sg. | tyu | tu |
| pl. | šo | ||
Numbers
- e, ev
- dyu
- tre
- štëvó
- puč
- ṣu
- sut
- vuṣṭ
- nu
- duċ
- yaníċ
- diċ
- triċ
- šturéċ, štruċ (Ktivi)
- pčiċ
- ṣeċ
- stiċ
- ṣṭiċ
- neċ
- vëċë́
Further reading
- Halfmann, Jakob (2024). A Grammatical Description of the Katë Language (Nuristani) (PhD thesis). Universität zu Köln.
