Pahari Kinnauri language

Western Pahari language of northern India

Pahari Kinnauri
Indo Aryan Kinnauri
पहाड़ी किनौरी ओरास बोली Oras Boli
Kinnauri Pahari and Oras Boli written in Takri Script.
Native to	India
Region	Himachal Pradesh
Ethnicity	Tribal of Kinnaur district
Native speakers	(6,300 cited 1998 survey)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Northern Western Pahari (Himachali) Pahari Kinnauri
Writing system	Takri, Devanagari
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kjo
Glottolog	hari1246

This article contains Indic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks or boxes, misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Indic text.

Pahari Kinnauri, or Kinnauri Pahari (Takri: 𑚊𑚮𑚝𑚵𑚤𑚯 𑚞𑚩𑚭𑚪𑚯), also known as Oras Boli (Takri: 𑚈𑚤𑚭𑚨 𑚠𑚴𑚥𑚯), is a Western Pahari of northern India. It is spoken by different tribal groups in Kinnaur District, Himachal Pradesh; the language used to be commonly known as 'Kinnauri Tribal language', but this is now considered a derogatory term. It is not clear how distinct it is from other varieties of Himachali.

Wiktionary has a category on Harijan Kinnauri Language.

Script

The native script of the language is a variety of Takri script.

Status

The language is also commonly called Pahari or Himachali. The language has no official status and is recorded under Kinnauri or Pahari.^[2] According to the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the language is of definitely endangered category, i.e. many Kinnauri Pahari children are not learning Kinnauri Pahari as their mother tongue any longer. One of the reason is he favoritism towards Hindi by the Indian Government.

A demand for the inclusion of 'Pahari (Himachali)' under the Eight Schedule of the Constitution, which is supposed to represent multiple Pahari languages of Himachal Pradesh, was made in the year 2010 by the state's Vidhan Sabha.^[3] There has been no positive progress on this matter since then, despite small organisations making efforts to save the language.^[4] Due to political interest, the language is currently recorded as a dialect of Hindi, even when having a poor mutual intelligibility with it. As of now, there is no proposal to grant any status to Kinnauri.

References

Relevant literature

• Kumar, Ajesh and Saramma Bezily (2015). Kinnauri Pahari: Phonemic Summary, Himachal Pradesh, India. Reckong Peo: Unpublished manuscript.
• Kim, HaeKyung. 2021. Split case system and Case marking on NPs in Kinnauri Pahari, Proceedings of the Payap University Research Symposium 2021, Chiang Mai. Feb. 12, 2021. Payap University: Research and Academic Service Affairs. 1203-1211.
• Kim, HaeKyung. 2019. Verb agreement in Kinnauri Pahari. Proceedings of the Payap Research Symposium 2019. Chiang Mai. Feb. 8, 2019. Payap University: Research and Academic Service Affairs. 760-772.
• Negi, Harvinder. "A sociolinguistic profile of the Kinnaura tribe." Nepalese Linguistics 27 (2012): 101-105.
• Saxena, Anju. "A Linguistic Sketch of Kinnauri Pahari." In The Linguistic Landscape of the Indian Himalayas, pp. 272-375. Brill, 2022.