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Kishtwari or Kashtwari is a northern Indo-Aryan language closely related to the Kashmiri language, with strong influences from neighboring Western Pahari varieties, spoken in Kishtwar district in Jammu and Kashmir, India. Kishtwari has historically been classified as a dialect of Kashmiri by scholars such as George Abraham Grierson, and is partially intelligible with Kashmiri, but Kishtwari speakers maintain a separate identity from Kashmiri people, culturally identifying more closely with neighboring Pahari populations of Paddar, Doda-Bhadarwah and the rest of the Chenab Valley. Also Kishtwari speakers are of different ethnicities – mostly migrated from Bengal, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh during 11th century to 17th century.For those that consider Kishtwari as a divergent dialect of Kashmiri (discounting speaker sensibilities), it is one of the two Kashmiri varieties are spoken outside of the Kashmir Valley (the other being Poguli, which is even more distinct and not intelligible with either Kashmiri or Kishtwari). Kishtwari is also tonal, like neighbouring languages such as Dogri and Punjabi. For those who consider Kishtwari as intermediate, linguists like Siddheshwar Varma have argued Kishtwari as Kashmir dialect and called kishtwari an intermediate between Western Pahari and Kashmiri.[3][4]

Kishtwari
किश्तवाड़ी
Native to	Jammu and Kashmir
Ethnicity	Kishtwari
Native speakers	39,748[1][2] (2011 census)
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Kashmiric Kishtwari
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	kish1245

Overview

Grierson, in his Linguistic Survey of India, classified Kishtwari as a highly divergent variety of Kashmiri that had been profoundly influenced by neighbouring Punjabi and Western Pahari languages.[5] Grierson noted that Kishtwari is more conservative in certain aspects than other Kashmiri dialects, as evidenced by the retention of subject pronoun thu, in addition to the present participle an, features that have disappeared in Standard Kashmiri. A wordlist and preliminary grammatical sketch of Kishtwari were compiled in The Languages of the Northern Himalayas.[6]

The 1911 Census of India recorded 7,464 speakers of Kishtwari.

Script

Grierson remarks that an idiosyncratic variant of Takri is used to write the Kishtwari language; as well as observing that there does not appear to be standard spelling nor a consistent orthography.

References

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