Shughni language

Shughni or Khughni is one of the Pamir languages of the Southeastern Iranian language group. Its distribution is in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region in Tajikistan, Badakhshan Province in Afghanistan, Chitral district in Pakistan and Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County in China.

Shughni-Rushani tends towards SOV word order, distinguishes a masculine and feminine gender in nouns and some adjectives, as well as the 3rd person singular of verbs. Shughni distinguishes between an absolutive and an oblique case in its system of pronouns. Rushani is noted for a typologically unusual 'double-oblique' construction, also called a 'transitive case', in the past tense. Normally Soviet school scientists consider Rushani as a close but independent language to Shughni, while Western school scientists codes Rushani as a dialect of Shughni due to Afghanistan Rushani speakers living in the Sheghnan district of Badakhshan Province.

Dialects
Rushani, Bartangi, Oroshori (Roshorvi), Khufi and Shughni proper are considered to be dialects. However, Bartangi and Khufi are quite distinct and may be separate languages.

Vowels
The following are the vowels of Shughni: Long vowels occur as /,, /.

Consonants
The following are the consonants of Shughni:


 * /r/ can be realised as a trill [r] or a tap [ɾ].
 * Velar sounds /x, ɣ/ can also be realised as more fronted palatal sounds [ç, ʝ].

Orthography
Shughni people live in both Afghanistan and Tajikistan. For the past 100 years, each country has had diverging literary traditions and orthographic standards. On either side of the border, Shughni literaturists, being previously an unwritten language, has relied heavily on the existing orthographic standards and conventions in coming up with an orthography for Shughni language.

In Tajikistan, Perso-Arabic alphabet was discarded in 1928, being replaced by Latin alphabet, and 11 years afterwards in 1939, Latin alphabet being replaced by Cyrillic alphabet. Tajik Cyrillic alphabet is of course based on Russian orthography, and similar to that of Uzbek language in neighboring Uzbekistan. Thus, the alphabets developed in Tajikistan for Shughni language, have been Cyrillic and Latin.

In Afghanistan, Dari (Afghan Persian), with the well-established Perso-Arabic script, is the literary language of the nation. Pashto language too, with its own alphabet, derived from Persian, but with unique features and conventions, is the co-official language of Afghanistan. Thus, the Shughni orthography being developed by literaturists in Afghanistan has been derived from Persian, and borrowing letters from Pashto as needed.

Perso-Arabic alphabet
The process of compiling a Perso-Arabic derived alphabet for Shughni has been a long and iterative one, over a period starting from 2004, with the publication of the first book on phonology and orthography of Shughni language by Khair Mohammad Haidari.

This was followed by a 2011 publication by Dr. Nur Ali Dost from Montreal-based "Sohravardi Foundation for Iranian Studies"., a 2011 compilation by Mazhab Shah Zahoori and two other by Alishah Sabbar and Calgary-based Dr. Khush Nazar Parmerzad.

This led to controversy, correspondence, and collaboration between Shughni literaturists and academics, who over the following years, agreed upon specific set of consonants, and a specific standardized way of representing vowels.

The Afghan government has officially adopted Shughni orthography as well, and the Ministry of Education has created textbooks to be used in Badakhshan Province.

Letters
Below table demonstrates the 44-letter Perso-Arabic-derived Shughni alphabet.

Vowels
Shughni language consists of 10 vowels. There are 3 short vowels, which have 3 corresponding long vowels, and there are 4 additional long vowels. One of the topics of controversy in the process of compiling and standardizing Shughni orthography, was how to express all 9 of the vowels. In this process, letters from Pashto and Urdu have been borrowed ( and ), a new letter has been created and due to a lack of the sound [h], the letter he  has been repurposed from a consonant grapheme to a vowel one.

Below tables demonstrate how vowels are to be written in different positions within a word. Note that some vowels don't occur in specific positions in Shughni phonology. Also note that diacritics are generally dropped in writing. Also note that there exists free variation between the short vowels in colloquial Shughni.

Sample Text
Below is a sample text, the first few passages from translations of a British nursery rhyme, The Old Woman and Her Pig.

Literature

 * Edelman, D. (Joy) I. and Leila R. Dodykhudoeva (2009). "Shughni." In: Gernot Windfuhr (ed.), The Iranian Languages, 787-824. London & New York: Routledge.
 * Olson, Karen (2017). Shughni Phonology Statement. SIL International.
 * Zarubin, I. I. (1960). Shugnanskie teksty i slovar. Moskva: Izd-vo Akademii nauk SSSR.