Kashmiri
कॉशुर, كٲشُر
The word "Koshur" in Sharada script, Perso-Arabic script and Devanagari
Native to	India, Pakistan
Region	Jammu and Kashmir,[1] Azad Kashmir
Ethnicity	Kashmiris
Native speakers	7 million (2011 census)[2]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Dardic Kashmiri
Dialects	Kashtawari (standard) Poguli
Writing system	Perso-Arabic script (contemporary),[3] Devanagari (contemporary),[3] Sharada script (ancient/liturgical)[3]
Official status
Official language in	India[4]
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ks
ISO 639-2	kas
ISO 639-3	kas
Glottolog	kash1277
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Kashmiri (English: /kæʃˈmɪəri/)^[5] or Koshur (English: /kɜːʃur/; कॉशुर, كٲشُر),^[6] is a language from the Dardic subgroup of Indo-Aryan languages, spoken by around 7 million Kashmiris, primarily in the Indian territory of Jammu and Kashmir. There are also speakers in parts of the neighbouring Pakistani territory of Azad Kashmir.

Although the official language of Jammu and Kashmir is Urdu, Kashmiri is recognised as a regional language in the state and is also among the 22 scheduled languages of India.

Kashmiri has split ergativity and the unusual verb-second word order.

Geographic distribution and status

There are about 6.8 million speakers of Kashmiri and related dialects in Jammu and Kashmir and amongst the Kashmiri diaspora in other states of India.^[7] Most Kashmiri speakers are located in the Kashmir Valley and Chenab Valley of Jammu and Kashmir.^[8] There are also about 130,000 speakers in the Pakistani territory of Azad Kashmir, primary concentrated in the Neelam and Leepa valleys, and in the district of Haveli.^[9][10]

The Kashmiri language is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India,^[11] and is a part of the eighth Schedule in the constitution of the Jammu and Kashmir. Along with other regional languages mentioned in the Sixth Schedule, as well as Hindi and Urdu, the Kashmiri language is to be developed in the state.^[12] Most Kashmiri speakers use Urdu or English as a second language.^[1] Since November 2008, the Kashmiri language has been made a compulsory subject in all government schools in the Valley up to secondary level.^[13]

Phonology

Kashmiri has the following vowel phonemes:^[14][15]

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i iː	ɨ ɨː	u uː
Mid	e eː	ə əː	o oː
Low		a aː	ɔ ɔː

Consonants

Archaisms

Kashmiri, as also the other Dardic languages, shows important divergences from the Indo-Aryan mainstream. One is the partial maintenance of the three sibilant consonants s ṣ ś of the Old Indo-Aryan period. For another example, the prefixing form of the number 'two', which is found in Sanskrit as dvi-, has developed into ba-/bi- in most other Indo-Aryan languages, but du- in Kashmiri (preserving the original dental stop d). Seventy-two is dusatath in Kashmiri, bahattar in Hindi-Urdu and Punjabi, and dvisaptati in Sanskrit.^[16]

Certain features in Kashmiri even appear to stem from Indo-Aryan even predating the Vedic period. For instance, there was an /s/ > /h/ consonant shift in some words that had already occurred with Vedic Sanskrit (this tendency is even stronger in the Iranian branch of Indo-Iranian), yet is lacking in Kashmiri equivalents. The word rahit in Vedic Sanskrit and modern Hindi-Urdu (meaning 'excluding' or 'without') corresponds to rost in Kashmiri. Similarly, sahit (meaning 'including' or 'with') corresponds to sost in Kashmiri.^[16]

Writing system

There are three orthographical systems used to write the Kashmiri language: the Sharada script, the Devanagari script and the Perso-Arabic script. The Roman script is also sometimes informally used to write Kashmiri, especially online.^[3]

The Kashmiri language is traditionally written in the Sharada script after the 8th Century A.D.^[17] This script however, is not in common use today, except for religious ceremonies of the Kashmiri Pandits.^[18]

Today it is written in Perso-Arabic and Devanagari scripts (with some modifications).^[19] Among languages written in the Perso-Arabic script, Kashmiri is one of the scripts that regularly indicates all vowel sounds.^[20] The Kashmiri Perso-Arabic script has come to be associated with Kashmiri Muslims, while the Kashmiri Devanagari script has come to be associated with the Kashmiri Hindu community.^[21][22]

Perso-Arabic script

Consonants

The digraphs of Aspirated consonant are as follow.

Vowels

Devanagari

Consonants

Vowels

Tabulated below is one version of the proposal to spell the Kashmiri vowels with Devanagari:^[23][24]

The other version of the proposal is shown below:^[26]

Grammar

Kashmiri is a fusional language^[27] with verb-second (V2) word order.^[28] Several of Kashmiri’s grammatical features distinguish it from other Indo-Aryan languages.^[29]

Nouns

Kashmiri nouns are inflected according to gender, number and case. There are no articles, nor is there any grammatical distinction for definiteness, although there is some optional adverbial marking for indefinite or "generic" noun qualities.^[27]

Gender

The Kashmiri gender system is divided into masculine and feminine. Feminine forms are typically generated by the addition of a suffix (or in most cases, a morphophonemic change, or both) to a masculine noun.^[27] TA relatively small group of feminine nouns have unique suppletion forms that are totally different from the corresponding masculine forms.^[30] The following table illustrates the range of possible gender forms:^[31]

Process	Masculine	Feminine	Meaning
vowel change	sur	suɨr	child
consonant change	hokh	hoch	dry
vowel/consonant change	tot	təts	hot
suppletive form	marɨd	zanān	man/woman
masculine only	kāv	---	crow
feminine only	---	məch	fly

Some nouns borrowed from other languages, such as Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Urdu or English, follow a slightly different gender system. Notably, many words borrowed from Urdu have different genders in Kashmiri.^[30]

Case

There are five cases in Kashmiri: nominative, dative, ergative, ablative and vocative.^[32] Case is expressed via suffixation of the noun.

Kashmiri utilizes an ergative-absolutive case structure when the verb is in simple past tense.^[32] Thus, in these sentences, the subject of a transitive verb is marked in the ergative case and the object in nominative, which is identical to how the subject of an intransitive verb is marked.^[32][33][34] However, in sentences constructed in any other tense, or in past tense sentences with intransitive verbs, a nominative-dative paradigm is adopted, with objects (whether direct or indirect) generally marked in dative case.^[35]

Other case distinctions, such as locative, instrumental, genitive, comitative and allative, are marked by postpositions rather than suffixation.^[36]

Noun morphology

The following table illustrates Kashmiri noun declension according to gender, number and case.^[35][37]

	Masc. Sing.	Masc. Pl.	Fem. Sing.	Fem. Pl.
Nom.	-Ø	-Ø	-Ø	-Ø
Erg.	-an	-av	-i	-av
Dat.	-as	-an	-i	-an
Abl.	-i/ɨ	-av	-i	-av
Voc.	-ā	-av	-iy	-av

Verbs

Kashmiri verbs are declined according to tense and person, and to a lesser extent, gender. Tense, along with certain distinctions of aspect, is formed by the addition of suffixes to the verb stem (minus the infinitive ending -un), and in many cases by the addition of various modal auxiliaries.^[38] Postpositions fulfill numerous adverbial and semantic roles.^[39]

Tense

Present tense in Kashmiri is an auxiliary construction formed by a combination of the copula and the imperfective suffix -ān added to the verb stem. The various copula forms agree with their subject according to gender and number, and are provided below with the verb yun (to come):^[40]

Present

	Masculine	Feminine
1st Person Sing.	chus yivān	chas yivān
2nd Person Sing.	chukh yivān	chakh yivān
3rd Person Sing.	chu yivān	cha yivān
1st Person Pl.	chi yivān	cha yivān
2nd Person Pl.	chiv yivān	chavɨ yivān
3rd Person Pl.	chi yivān	cha yivān

Past tense in Kashmiri is significantly more complex than the other tenses, and is subdivided into three past tense distinctions.^[41] The simple (sometimes called proximate) past refers to completed past actions. Remote past refers to actions that lack this in-built perfective aspect. Indefinite past refers to actions performed a long time ago, and is often used in historical narrative or storytelling contexts.^[42]

As described above, Kashmiri is a split-ergative language; in all three of these past tense forms, the subjects of transitive verbs are marked in the ergative case and direct objects in the nominative. Intransitive subjects are marked in the nominative.^[42] Nominative arguments, whether subjects or objects, dictate gender, number and person marking on the verb.^[42][43]

Verbs of the simple past tense are formed via the addition of a suffix to the verb stem, which usually undergoes certain uniform morphophonemic changes. First and third person verbs of this type do not take suffixes and agree with the nominative object in gender and number, but there are second person verb endings. The entire simple past tense paradigm of transitive verbs is illustrated below using the verb parun ("to read"):^[44]

Simple Past (Transitive)

	Masc. Sing.	Masc. Pl.	Fem. Sing.	Fem. Pl.
1st Person	por	pər’	pər	pari
2nd Person	poruth	pərith	pərɨth	par’ath
3rd Person	por	pər’	pər	pari

A group of irregular intransitive verbs (special intransitives), take a different set of endings in addition to the morphophonemic changes that affect most past tense verbs.^[45]

Simple Past (Special Intransitive)

	Masc. Sing.	Masc. Pl.	Fem. Sing.	Fem. Pl.
1st Person	-us	-’	-as	-i
2nd Person	-kh	-vɨ	-kh	-vɨ
3rd Person	-Ø	-Ø	-ch	-i

Intransitive verbs in the simple past are conjugated the same as intransitives in the indefinite past tense form.^[46]

Simple Past (Intransitive)

	Masc. Sing.	Masc. Pl.	Fem. Sing.	Fem. Pl.
1st Person	-yas	-yēyi	-yēyas	-yēyi
2nd Person	-yākh	-yēyvɨ	-yēyakh	-yēyvɨ
3rd Person	-yōv	-yēyi	-yēyi	-yēyi

In contrast to the simple past, verb stems are unchanged in the indefinite and remote past, although the addition of the tense suffixes does cause some morphophonetic change.^[47] Transitive verbs are declined according to the following paradigm:^[48]

Indefinite Past (Transitive)

	Masc. Sing.	Masc. Pl.	Fem. Sing.	Fem. Pl.
1st/3rd Person	-yōv	-ēyi	-ēyi	-ēyi
2nd Person	-yōth	-ēyath	-ēyath	-ēyath

Remote Past (Transitive)

	Masc. Sing.	Masc. Pl.	Fem. Sing.	Fem. Pl.
1st/3rd Person	-ēyōv	-ēyāyi	-ēyāyi	-ēyāyi
2nd Person	-ēyōth	-ēyēyath	-ēyēyath	-ēyēyath

As in the simple past, "special intransitive" verbs take a different set of endings in the indefinite and remote past:^[49]

Indefinite Past (Special Intransitive)

	Masc. Sing.	Masc. Pl.	Fem. Sing.	Fem. Pl.
1st Person	-ās	-āyas	-āyas	-āyi
2nd Person	-kh	-kh	-āyakh	-āyivɨ
3rd Person	-av	-āyi	-āyi	-āyi

Remote Past (Special Intransitive)

	Masc. Sing.	Masc. Pl.	Fem. Sing.	Fem. Pl.
1st Person	-āyās	-ēyāyi	-ēyēyas	-ēyēyi
2nd Person	-ākh	-ēyvɨ	-āyakh	-āyivɨ
3rd Person	-ēyōv	-ēyēyi	-ēyāyɨ	-ēyāyɨ

Regular intransitive verbs also take a different set of endings in the indefinite and remote past, subject to some morphophonetic variation:^[50]

Indefinite Past (Intransitive)

	Masc. Sing.	Masc. Pl.	Fem. Sing.	Fem. Pl.
1st Person	-yas	-yēyi	-yēyas	-yēyi
2nd Person	-yākh	-yēyvɨ	-yēyakh	-yēyvɨ
3rd Person	-yōv	-yēyi	-yēyi	-yēyi

Remote Past (Intransitive)

	Masc. Sing.	Masc. Pl.	Fem. Sing.	Fem. Pl.
1st Person	-yēyās	-yēyi	-yēyās	-yēyi
2nd Person	-yēyakh	-yēyvɨ	-yēyakh	-yēyvɨ
3rd Person	-yēyōv	-yēyi	-yēyāyɨ	-yēyɨ

Future tense intransitive verbs are formed by the addition of suffixes to the verb stem:^[51]

Future (Intransitive)

	Singular	Plural
1st Person	-mɨ	-mav
2nd Person	-akh	-yi
3rd Person	-yi	-an

The future tense of transitive verbs, however, is formed by adding suffixes that agree with both the subject and direct object according to number, in a complex fashion:^[52]

Future (Transitive)

	Singular Object	Plural Object
1st Person Sing.	-an	-akh
1st Person Pl.	-ɨhōn	-ɨhōkh
2nd Person Sing.	-ɨhǝn	-ɨhǝkh
2nd Person Pl.	-ɨhūn	-ɨhūkh
3rd Person Sing.	-yas	-yakh
3rd Person Pl.	-ɨnas	-ɨnakh

Aspect

There are two main aspectual distinctions in Kashmiri, perfective and imperfective. Both employ a participle formed by the addition of a suffix to the verb stem, as well as the fully conjugated auxiliary āsun ("to be")—which agrees according to gender, number and person with the object (for transitive verbs) or the subject (for intransitive verbs).^[53]

Like the auxiliary, the participle suffix used with the perfective aspect (expressing completed or concluded action) agrees in gender and number with the object (for transitive verbs) or subject (for intransitives) as illustrated below:^[53]

	Masc. Sing.	Masc. Pl.	Fem. Sing.	Fem. Pl.
	mut	-mɨt’	-mɨts	-matsɨ

The imperfective (expressing habitual or progressive action) is simpler, taking the participle suffix -ān in all forms, with only the auxiliary showing agreement.^[54] A type of iterative aspect can be expressed by reduplicating the imperfective participle.^[55]

Pronouns

Pronouns are declined according to person, gender, number and case, although only third person pronouns are overtly gendered. Also in third person, a distinction is made between three degrees of proximity, called proximate, remote I and remote II.^[56]

Nominative

	Masc. Sing.	Masc. Pl.	Fem. Sing.	Fem. Pl.
1st	bɨ	ǝs’	bɨ	ǝs’
2nd	tsɨ	toh’	tsɨ	toh’
3rd prox.	yi	yim	yi	yim
3rd R I	hu	hum	hɔ	humɨ
3rd R II	su	tim	sɔ	timɨ

Ergative

	Masc. Sing.	Masc. Pl.	Fem. Sing.	Fem. Pl.
1st	me	asi	me	asi
2nd	tse	tɔhi	tse	tɔhi
3rd prox.	yem’	yimav	yemi	yimav
3rd R I	hom’	humav	homi	humav
3rd R II	tǝm’	timav	tami	timav

Dative

	Masc. Sing.	Masc. Pl.	Fem. Sing.	Fem. Pl.
1st	me	asi	me	asi
2nd	tse	tɔhi	tse	tɔhi
3rd prox.	yemis	yiman	yemis	yiman
3rd R I	homis	human	homis	human
3rd R II	tǝmis	timan	tǝmis	timan

Ablative

	Masc. Sing.	Masc. Pl.	Fem. Sing.	Fem. Pl.
1st	me	asi	me	asi
2nd	tse	tɔhi	tse	tɔhi
3rd prox.	yemi	yimav	yemi	yimav
3rd R I	homi	humav	homi	humav
3rd R II	tami	timav	tami	timav

There is also a dedicated genitive pronoun set, in contrast to the way that the genitive is constructed adverbially elsewhere. As with future tense, these forms agree with both the subject and direct object in person and number.^[57]

	Masc. Sing.	Masc. Pl.	Fem. Sing.	Fem. Pl.
1st Sing.	m’ōn	mēn’	mēn’	m’āni
1st Pl.	sōn	sǝn’	sǝn’	sāni
2nd Sing.	cōn	cǝn’	cǝn’	cāni
2nd Pl.	tuhund	tuhɨnd’	tuhɨnz	tuhɨnzɨ
3rd Sing. Prox.	yem’sund	yem’sɨnd’	yem’sɨnz	yems’sɨnzi
3rd Pl. Prox.	yihund	yihɨnd’	yihɨnz	yihanzɨ
3rd Sing. R I	hom’sund	hom’sɨnd’	hom’sɨnz	hom’sɨnzɨ
3rd Pl. R I	huhund	huhɨnd’	huhɨnz	huhɨnzɨ
3rd Sing. R II	tǝm’sund	tǝm’sɨnd’	tǝm’sɨnz	tǝm’sɨnzɨ
3rd Pl. R II	tihund	tihɨnd’	tihɨnz	tihɨnzɨ

Adjectives

There are two kinds of adjectives in Kashmiri, those that agree with their referent noun (according to case, gender and number) and those that are not declined at all.^[58] Most adjectives are declined, and generally take the same endings and gender-specific stem changes as nouns.^[59] The declinable adjective endings are provided in the table below, using the adjective wozul ("red"):^[60][61]

	Masc. Sing.	Fem. Sing.	Masc. Pl.	Fem. Pl.
Nom.	wozul	wozaj	wozal	wozaji
Erg.	wozal	wozaji	wozalav	wozalan
Dat.	wozalis	wozaji	wozalan	wozalan
Abl.	wozalis	wozaji	wozalav	wozalav
Voc.	wozaliā	wozaj	wozalav	wozalav

Among those adjectives not declined are adjectives that end in -lad or -a, adjectives borrowed from other languages, and a few isolated irregulars.^[60]

The comparative and superlative forms of adjectives are formed with the words tsor ("more") and sitha ("most"), respectively.^[62]

Numerals

Template:Redirect for Within the Kashmir language, numerals are separated into cardinal numbers and ordinal numbers.^[63] These numeral forms, as well as their aggregative (both, all the five, etc.), multiplicative (two times, four times, etc.), and emphatic forms (only one, only three, etc.) are provided by the table below.^[63]

	Cardinal	Ordinal	Aggregative	Multiplicative	Emphatic
Suffix		-im	-vay	-gon	-y
1.	akh	ǝkim			akuy
2.	zɨ	doyim	dɔshovay	dogun	zɨ
3.	tre	treyim	treshvay	trogun	trey
4.	tsor	tsu:rim	tsɔshvay	tsogun	tsoy
5.	pã:tsh	pɨ:tsim	pã:tsɨvay	pã:tsɨgon	pã:tsay

Vocabulary

There are minor differences between the Kashmiri spoken by Hindus and Muslims.^[64] For 'fire', a traditional Hindu uses the word agun while a Muslim more often uses the Arabic word nar.^[65]

Preservation of old Indo-Aryan vocabulary

Kashmiri retains several features of Old Indo-Aryan that have been lost in other modern Indo-Aryan languages such as Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi and Sindhi.^[16] Some vocabulary features that Kashmiri preserves clearly date from the Vedic Sanskrit era and had already been lost even in Classical Sanskrit. This includes the word-form yodvai (meaning if), which is mainly found in Vedic Sanskrit texts. Classical Sanskrit and modern Indo-Aryan use instead the word yadi.^[16]

First person pronoun

Both the Indo-Aryan and Iranian branches of the Indo-Iranian family have demonstrated a strong tendency to eliminate the distinctive first person pronoun ("I") used in the nominative (subject) case. The Indo-European root for this is reconstructed as *eǵHom, which is preserved in Sanskrit as aham and in Avestan Persian as azam. This contrasts with the m- form ("me", "my") that is used for the accusative, genitive, dative, ablative cases. Sanskrit and Avestan both used forms such as ma(-m). However, in languages such as Modern Persian, Baluchi, Hindi and Punjabi, the distinct nominative form has been entirely lost and replaced with m- in words such as ma-n and mai. However, Kashmiri belongs to a relatively small set that preserves the distinction. 'I' is ba/bi/bo in various Kashmiri dialects, distinct from the other me terms. 'Mine' is myoon in Kashmiri. Other Indo-Aryan languages that preserve this feature include Dogri (aun vs me-), Gujarati (hu-n vs ma-ri), Konkani (hā̃v vs mhazo), and Braj (hau-M vs mai-M). The Iranian Pashto preserves it too (za vs. maa).^[66]

Literature