Rushani is one of the Eastern Iranian Pamir languages spoken in Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Rushani is relatively closer to all Northern Pamiri languages sub-group whether it is Shughni, Yazgulami, Sarikuli or Oroshori sharing many grammatical and vocabulary similarity with all of them especially with Shughni and thus some linguists consider it a dialect of Shughni.
Rushan is divided into two parts by Panj river where on right bank along Bartang river to the East located Rushan district of GBAO, Tajikistan and on the left side located several villages of Roshan area in northern part of the Sheghnan District, in the Badakhshan Province of Afghanistan and the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region in Tajikistan. Afghani Roshan consists of six villages including Rubotin, Paguor, Chawed, York, Shaikhin and Chasnud, five of which are located on the bank of the river Panj, which meets at the border of Tajikistan.Muller, K. 2010: Language in Community-Oriented and Contact-Oriented Domains: The Case of the Shughni of Tajakistan. SIL International. Most Rushani speakers belong to the Ismaili branch of Shi'a Islam.
Language use Rushani, like Shughni, is only used in unofficial settings. All of the children in the community learn Rushani as their first language and rely heavily on it until they enroll in school. It is only then that they learn the official language of the country. Adult speakers are all bi- or tri-lingual in Tajik Persian and Russian.
Traditionally Rushani was not a written language, with Rushani speakers writing in Persian.Dodykhudoeva, L. 2007: Revitalization of minority languages: comparative dictionary of key cultural terms in the languages and dialects of the Shugni-Rushani group. London: SOAS. Writing systems have been developed for the language using Cyrillic and Latin scripts, for example for use in translation of parts of the bible by the Institute for Bible Translation.
Phonology
Vowels FrontCentralBackCloseNear-closeClose-midOpen-midOpen
Long vowels occur as /, , , /
Consonants The following are the consonants of Rushani: Labial Dental/Alveolar Post-alveolar Velar UvularGlottal Plosive/AffricatevoicelessvoicedFricativevoiceless()voiced Nasal() Approximant Rhotic
/r/ can be realised as a trill [r] or a tap [ɾ]. A glottal /h/ may also appear due to the influence of Tajik Persian. Orthography
CyrillicLatinCyrillicLatinCyrillicLatinCyrillicLatinCyrillicLatinА аA aД дD dЙ йY yП пP pФ фF fА̄ а̄Ā āД̌ д̌Δ δК кK kР рR rХ хX xБ бB bЕ еE eҚ қQ qС сS sХ̌ х̌X̌ x̌В вV vЖ жŽ žЛ лL lТ тT tЦ цC cВ̌ в̌W wЗ зZ zМ мM mТ̌ т̌Θ ϑЧ чČ čГ гG gҘ ҙӠ ӡН нN nУ уU uҶ ҷJ̌ ǰГ̌ г̌Ɣ̌ ɣ̌И иI iО оO oӮ ӯŪ ūШ шŠ šҒ ғƔ ɣӢ ӣĪ īО̄ о̄Ō ōУ̊ у̊Ů ů
Verbs Rushani is unusual in having a transitive alignment system – a so-called double-oblique clause structure – in the past tense. That is, in the past tense,or perhaps perfective aspect the agent and object of a transitive verb are both marked, while the subject of an intransitive verb is not. In the present tense, the object of the transitive verb is marked, the other two roles are not – that is, a typical nominative–accusative alignment.J.R. Payne, 'Language Universals and Language Types', in Collinge, ed. 1990. An Encyclopedia of Language. Routledge. From Payne, 1980. See transitive alignment for examples.
Literature Zarubin, I.I. Bartangskie i rushanskie teksty i slovar. Moskva : Izd-vo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1937. Payne, John, "Pamir languages" in Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, ed. Schmitt (1989), 417–444. Payne, John. "The decay of ergativity in Pamir languages." Lingua 51:147-186.
References
External links Rushani at the Endangered Languages Project