| Dameli | |
| Nativename: | Dāmya bāṣa |
| States: | Pakistan |
| Region: | Khyber Pakhtunkhwa |
| Speakers: | 5,000 |
| Date: | 2001 |
| Ref: | e18 |
| Familycolor: | Indo-European |
| Fam2: | Indo-Iranian |
| Fam3: | Indo-Aryan |
| Fam4: | Dardic |
| Fam5: | Kunar |
| Iso3: | dml |
| Glotto: | dame1241 |
| Glottorefname: | Dameli |
| Notice: | Indic |
| Ethnicity: | Damia |
Dameli (دَميلي), also Damia, Damɛ̃ḍī, Dāmia bāṣa or Gidoj,[1] [2] is an Indo-Aryan language of the Dardic subgroup spoken by approximately 5,000 people in the Domel Town, in the Chitral District of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.
The Domel or Damel Valley is about ten miles south of Drosh on the East Side of the Chitral or Kunar river, on the road from the Mirkhani Fort to the pass of Arandu.
Dameli is still the main language in the villages where it is spoken, and it is regularly learned by children. Most of the men speak Pashto as a second language, and some also speak Khowar and Urdu, but there are no signs of massive language change.
Emil Perder's 2013 dissertation, A Grammatical Description of Dameli, based on the author's field work, is the first comprehensive description of the Dameli language. Before Perder's work, the main source of information on Dameli was an article by Georg Morgenstierne, published in 1942: "Notes on Dameli: A Kafir-Dardic Language of the Chitral". A sociolinguistic survey written by Kendall Decker (1992) contains a chapter on Dameli.
The language is classified as an Indo-Aryan language of the Dardic subgroup. It is notable for containing a significant degree of words deriving from the Nuristani languages, even in basic vocabulary, though the pronoun system and morphology are characteristically of Dardic origin. The Dardic languages were first thought to be as an independent branch within Indo-Iranian, but today they are placed within Indo-Aryan following Morgenstierne's work.[3]
The following tables set out the phonology of the Dameli Language.[4]
| Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| High | pronounced as /i, iː/ | pronounced as /u/ | |
| Mid | pronounced as /e, eː/ | pronounced as /oː/ | |
| Low | pronounced as /a/ | pronounced as /ɑː/ |
| Labial | Coronal | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | pronounced as /m/ | pronounced as /n/ | pronounced as /ɳ/ | pronounced as /(ŋ)/ | |||||
| Stop | voiceless | pronounced as /p/ | pronounced as /t/ | pronounced as /ʈ/ | pronounced as /k/ | pronounced as /(q)/ | |||
| voiced | pronounced as /b/ | pronounced as /d/ | pronounced as /ɖ/ | pronounced as /ɡ/ | |||||
| aspirated | pronounced as /pʰ/ | pronounced as /tʰ/ | pronounced as /ʈʰ/ | pronounced as /kʰ/ | |||||
| Affricate | plain | pronounced as /ts/ | pronounced as /tʂ/ | pronounced as /tʃ/ | |||||
| aspirated | pronounced as /tsʰ/ | pronounced as /tʂʰ/ | pronounced as /tʃʰ/ | ||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | pronounced as /s/ | pronounced as /ʂ/ | pronounced as /ʃ/ | pronounced as /x/ | pronounced as /h/ | |||
| voiced | pronounced as /ʐ/ | pronounced as /ʒ/ | pronounced as /ɣ/ | ||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /l/ | pronounced as /j/ | pronounced as /w/ | ||||||
| Rhotic | pronounced as /r/ | pronounced as /rʲ ~ ç (?)/ | |||||||