Burushaski (, burúśaski, ; autonym: 'our language') is a language isolate, spoken by the Burusho people, native to northern Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan. There are also a few hundred speakers of this language in Kashmir Valley, India.
In Pakistan, Burushaski is spoken by the people of the Hunza District, the Nagar District, the northern Gilgit District, the Yasin Valley in the Gupis-Yasin District, and the Ishkoman Valley of the northern Ghizer District. Their native region is in northern Gilgit–Baltistan. It also borders the Pamir corridor to the north. In India, Burushaski is spoken in Botraj Mohalla of the Hari Parbat region in Srinagar. It is generally believed that the language was spoken in a much wider area in the past, due to the two disconnected regions in which it is spoken currently, which are separated by more easily traversible regions of the Hunza Valley where the Indo-Aryan Shina language is spoken. It is also known as Werchikwar and Miśa:ski.
Classification Attempts have been made to establish links between Burushaski and several different language families, although none has been accepted by a majority of linguists.
Some hypotheses posit a genealogical relationship between Burushaski and the North Caucasian languages, Kartvelian languages,Jan Henrik Holst: Die Herkunft des Buruschaski. 2017. Aachen: Shaker Verlag Yeniseian languages and/or Indo-European languages, usually in proposed macrofamilies: The proposed but contended "Dené–Caucasian" macrofamily includes Burushaski alongside Basque, North Caucasian, Yeniseian, Sino-Tibetan and Na-Dené.John Bengtson, Some features of Dene–Caucasian phonology (with special reference to Basque). Cahiers de l'Institut de Linguistique de Louvain (CILL) 30.4: 33-54,John Bengtson and V. Blazek, "Lexica Dene–Caucasica". Central Asiatic Journal 39, 1995, 11-50 & 161-164 Another proposed family, known as "Karasuk",George van Driem (2001) Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region, Brill links Burushaski with Yeniseian. A close relationship to a Northwestern group of Indo-European languages (including Germanic and Slavic languages and e.g. the extinct Phrygian) has been proposed by .Casule, Ilija. 2003. Evidence for the Indo-European laryngeals in Burushaski and its genetic affiliation with Indo-European. The Journal of Indo-European Studies 31:1–2, pp 21–86.Čašule, Ilija. 2012. Correlation of the Burushaski Pronominal System with Indo-European and Phonological and Grammatical Evidence for a Genetic Relationship. The Journal of Indo-European Studies 40:1–2, pp 59 ff, with review by Hamp, Huld, and Bengtson & Blazek Based on Čašule's investigations, Eric P. Hamp accepted a connection with Indoeuropean languages, but suggested that Burushaski is more remotely related, and rather belongs to a sister clade of the proposed "Indo-Hittite clade". (Čašule admitted that some of his proposed findings could be interpreted in this way, but stated that he preferred the Nortwestern IE alternative, based on perceived alignments in vocabulary.) A possible connection specifically to the North Caucasian languages.
Language contact Blench (2008) notes that the supposed evidence for external relationships of Burushaski rely on lexical data which may be better explained as originating from language contact. In particular, almost all Burushaski agricultural vocabulary appears to be borrowed from Dardic, Tibeto-Burman, and North Caucasian languages.
Following Berger (1956), the American Heritage dictionaries suggested that the word *abel 'apple', the only name for a fruit (tree) reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European, may have been borrowed from a language ancestral to Burushaski. ("Apple" and "apple tree" are báalt in modern Burushaski.)
Kashmiri linguist Sadaf Munshi stated that Burushaski may have developed alongside the Dravidian languages before the Indo-Aryan migration to South Asia, mentioning the fact that both possess retroflex sounds.
Mueezuddin Hakal (2022) argues that Burushaski preserves a primary stratum of vernacular stems alongside later loan vocabulary acquired through cultural contact, particularly with Gandhari Prakrit and Classical Sanskrit during the early centuries CE. Drawing on epigraphic and historical evidence from the Upper Indus region, he suggests that interaction between Burushaski-speaking communities and Indo Aryan linguistic traditions between the second and eighth centuries CE contributed to identifiable Sanskrit loanwords. While much core vocabulary remains vernacular in origin, certain lexical items, including terms such as tal "palate" and kapal "skull," are interpreted as reflecting Sanskrit influence.Hakal, Mueezuddin (2022). "Vernacular Stems and Loan Vocabulary in Burushaski: A Cultural Contact with Sanskrit as Expressed by the Names of Head Parts." Central European Management Journal 30(4): 2061–2072.
Varieties Burushaski is spoken by about 120,000 speakers in Pakistan, and also by a few hundred in India. In Pakistan, it is spoken in three main valleys: Yasin, Hunza, and Nagar. The varieties of Hunza and Nagar diverge slightly, but are clearly dialects of a single language. The Yasin variety, also known by the Khowar exonym Werchikwar, is much more divergent. Intelligibility between Yasin and Hunza-Nagar is difficult, and Yasin is sometimes considered a distinct language and thought to be the "pure" or "original" Burushaski by the speakers of Yasin valley itself.Backstrom & Radloff (1992), Anderson (2006) Yasin is the least affected by contact with neighboring languages, though speakers are bilingual in Khowar. Yasin is spoken by a quarter of Burushaski speakers.Anderson 1997: 1022
In India, Jammu & Kashmir Burushaski (JKB) "has developed divergent linguistic features which make it systematically different from the varieties spoken in Pakistan." The dialect of Burushaski spoken in India has been influenced by Kashmiri, as well as Hindi and Urdu. Unique to JKB are the features of vowel syncopation. Jammu & Kashmir Burushaski shares more similarities with the dialect spoken in Nagar than with that spoken in Hunza. The Srinagar variety of Burushaski has been described as "low toned" and as heavily influenced by other Kashmiri languages. The Srinagar variety of Burushaski has only 300 speakers.
Phonology
Vowels
Burushaski primarily has five vowels, . There are two sets of long vowels, distinguished by whether it is the first or the second mora that bears a stress or higher pitch. Various contractions result in long vowels; stressed vowels (marked with acute accents in Berger's transcription) tend to be longer and less "lax" (less centralised) than unstressed ones ( as opposed to ). Some have described this as an intentional utterance of a rising tone or a falling tone. For example, a word 'I told them' has a falling tone and the stress is on first mora. Another word, 'I did not say' has a rising tone and stress is on the second mora.Piar, Karim. 2012. « Phonological Sketch of the Hunza Dialect of Burushaski: The CVX Theory and Burushaski Syllable Structure ». University of Texas.
Long vowels only ever appear in stressed syllables and will thus carry one tone or the other.
As for short vowels, mid vowels and open vowels , , can appear in either stressed syllables or unstressed syllables. Short close vowels and usually only appear in unstressed syllables. Furthermore, the pair and alternate with and respectively in a stressed syllable.
Front CentralBack CloseMidOpen
All vowels have nasal counterparts in Hunza (in some expressive words) and in Nagar (also in proper names and a few other words).
Consonants
Berger (1998) finds the following consonants to be phonemic, shown below in the IPA and in his romanization scheme:
Bilabial Dental/Alveolar (Alveolo-)palatal Retroflex Velar Uvular GlottalNasal Plosiveaspirated voiceless voiced Affricate aspirated voiceless voiced Fricativevoiceless voiced Trill Approximant Notes:
Writing system Modern evolution Burushaski has predominantly been a spoken language. One of the earliest examples of modern Burushaski literature was the poetry written by Prof. Allamah Nasiruddin Nasir Hunzai in the 1940s. He began by using the Urdu alphabet to write the language, but soon realized that Urdu script was not adequate to the task, since it lacked the necessary letters to represent certain phonemes unique to Burushaski. This led him to undertake the task of devising a standardised Urdu-derived alphabet geared specifically to the accurate transcription of the Burushaski language. To this end, he went on to create consonant letters ݼ [tsʰ], څ [ʈʂ], ڎ [ts], ݽ [ʂ], ڞ [ʈʂʰ], and ݣ [ŋ]. Furthermore, innovative writers of Burushaski began to use superscript Urdu numbers to indicate different stress patterns, tones and vowel-lengths. For example, in Burushaski, the letter ـو (waw) represents a long vowel with a falling tone, "óo". The letter ـݸ (waw with a superscript 2) represents a short vowel "o", and the letter ـݹ (waw with a superscript 3) represents a long vowel with a rising tone, "oó".
During the mid-twentieth century, Ghulamuddin Ghulam Hunzai, a Burushaski poet and scholar, also contributed to the development of written Burushaski using a Persian-Arabic-based orthography. He published poetry in Burushaski using a modified Arabic script adapted to represent local sounds, contributing to one of the earliest substantial bodies of written literature in the language. His works include a Burushaski translation of the Qur’an and other religious and literary writings, which expanded the written corpus of Burushaski and informed subsequent discussions on orthographic standardization. Hunzai’s contributions, alongside those of other writers, form part of the broader historical development of modern Burushaski writing conventions.
Parallel to this, a Latin-derived orthography was created by Hermann Berger - a system which has found favour among many researchers and linguists. The "Burushaski Research Academy" currently recognises both the Urdu-based and the Latin-based orthography.
In the years 2006, 2009, and 2013, a 3-volume Burushaski-Urdu Dictionary was compiled in a collaboration between the "Burushaski Research Academy" and the University of Karachi, under the auspices of Prof. Allamah Nasiruddin Nasir Hunzai and published by the university's "Bureau of Composition, Compilation & Translation". This dictionary uses primarily the Urdu-derived alphabet, while employing Berger's Latin alphabet-derived orthography in a supplementary capacity.
Recently (2022-2023), community-led efforts have sought to standardize the writing of Burushaski. Burusho Maʰraka, a cultural and linguistic organization representing Burusho communities of Hunza, Nagar, and Yasin, has promoted a standardized orthography based on the Persian-Arabic script. The organization has worked to harmonize spelling conventions and produce teaching and reference materials aimed at strengthening literacy and inter-regional consistency in written Burushaski. These initiatives build upon earlier scholarly work and aim to provide a unified writing system for educational and digital use.
History