This article contains Balochi text, written from right to left with some letters joined. Without proper rendering support, you may see unjoined Balochi letters or other symbols instead of Balochi script.
Relatively few studies have been devoted to Eastern Balochi compared to other dialects of the Balochi language. There is too little material available.[9]
Dialects
Carina Jahani belives that Eastern Balochi (which is not a unified dialect, but rather a conglomerate of dialects often referred to by the tribal names of the speakers as the Marrī, Bugṭī, Leghārī, Mazārī, etc.)[4]
Eastern Hill Balochi These dialects are spoken in the areas of the Merri, Bugti, Leghari, and Mazari tribes.[7]Dames was the first to study this dialect and called it Northern Balochi.[11]
Elfenbein after research, he proposed a division of the Balochi dialects, which he called this dialect Eastern Hill Balochi.[10][12] It has now been influenced by Sindhi. The Baloch Talpurs ruled Sindh for a long time, which led to Baloch interaction with the inhabitants of Sindh, and over time, Balochi (Eastern Hill Balochi) became influenced by Sindhi.[5] It's spoken east of Quetta , Dera Ghazi Khan, and from Sibi in the west nearly to the Indus river in the east.[10]
Phonology
The sound system of Eastern Balochi is different from Southern and Western Balochi.[13] In Eastern Balochi, the sounds /f/, /kh/, and /gh/ are pronounced as /p/, /k/, /g/.[9]
Vowles
Based on what Dames mentions, the Eastern Balochi has the long vowels a2, i2, u2, the short vowels a, i, u, and the vowels e, ai, o, au under the name of diphthongs.
[14] It is mentioned that with the passage of time and contact with neighboring Indo-Aryan languages, the phenomenon of nasalization in Eastern Balochi has emerged.[15]
Vowel systems in Eastern Balochi
Scholars
Vowel systems
Dames (1891)
ī, i, e, a, ā, o, u, ū
Grierson (1921)
ī, i, e, ē, a, ā, o, ō, u, ū
Bashir (2008)
ī, i, e, ē, a, ā, o, ō, u, ū, ã, ā̃, ẽ, ĩ, ī, õ
Eatern Balochi has it's fricatives and acquired retroflex Consonants,[16] A fronting of ū > ī has taken place and n seems to have acquired phonemic status in Southern Balochi.[7]
Nasalization is phonemic in the eastern balochi and that caused by the effect of Indo-Aryan languages, like Sulaimani dialect that has borrowed a few sounds from them.
In Eastern Balochi, it is noted that the stop and glide consonants may also occur as aspiratedallophones in word initial position as [pʰ tʰ ʈʰ t͡ʃʰ kʰ] and [wʱ]. Allophones of stops in postvocalic position include for voiceless stops, [f θ x] and for voiced stops [β ð ɣ]. /n l/ are also dentalized as [n̪ l̪].[20] The complete set off, ʃ, β, x, ɣ, ǧ , it is present as regular phonemes in eastern balochi.[16] In Eastern Hill Baluchi, θ and ’ from postvocalic t and d; and intervocalic b tends to become v.[10]
Syllable
In Eastern Balochi, the last heavy syllable of a word is stressed.[21] Complex verbs and preposition + noun are treated as a unit as far as stress is concerned.[9]
Grammar
The grammar of Eastern Balochi is similar to the grammar of other dialects of the Balochi language.[13]
The Balochi ending for the Oblique plural of nouns is -ān, characteristic of Western Iranian languages.[10] It collectives suffix -gal, and used as a plural suffix. Verbs with infinitives in -a ˙g, words in -¯a¯o (i.e. /-¯ab/, corresponding to non Eastern -¯ab, e.g. xar¯a¯o < xar¯ab "bad".[13]
^Jahani, Korn, Carina, Agnes (2022). The Baloch and their Neighbours, Ethnic and Linguistic Contact in Balochistan in Historical and Modern Time. Cambridge University. ISBN3-89500-366-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Serge, Axenov (2006). The Balochi language of Turkmenistan: a corpus based grammatical description. Stockholm: Uppsala Universitet. ISBN978-91-554-6766-1. OCLC82163314.
^Farrell, Tim (1990). Basic Balochi: an introductory course. Naples: Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale". OCLC40953807.
^JahaniKorn 2009, pp. 634–692 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFJahaniKorn2009 (help).
