Content area
Full Text
Abstract
Mankiyali, a minority language, spoken in the village of Danna in the Mansehra District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), faces looming threat of extinction. The present research has revealed that the use of the language in different domains is gradually decreasing, and total number of fluent speakers of Mankiyali has reduced to less than 500 individuals. The lexical comparison of Mankiyali with other languages shows that the languages belong to "Dardic" group of Indo-Aryan languages. It shares higher lexical similarity with Bateri than any other language within the "Dardic "group. According to the lexical similarity analysis, field observation and interviews, Mankiyali is not mutually intelligible with any other neighboring languages including Bateri. The phonological analysis of the language reveals that it has six syllable types, and has not retained the aspirated voiced stops of like many other languages of the group The language did not inherited tone as of "Dardic' language group. On the basis of the available data we conclude this language has developed the Punjabi type of tone. This section on phonology might be extended and a comprehensive linguistic description of this language be created in the future. This vital linguistic data is an initial attempt to preserve this language and might be employed to develop orthography for the language and produce literacy material for language learning.
The present study is first attempt to investigate Mankiyali, an undocumented language, spoken in the Mansehra District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). No previous linguistic literature has reported the language (O'Leary, 1992; Grierson, 1928; Morgenstierne, 1973; Lewis, et al. 2014; Rehman and Baart, 2005).
The Mankiyali language is spoken in a secluded hilltop village, Danna, in the Union Council Bandi Shungli, 46 kilometers to the northwest of Mansehra. The small ethnolinguistic minority speaking the language is locally known as the Trawara (?t? r????) Community. The language is increasingly losing the battle for survival as its speakers are gradually shifting to Hindko, a predominant language of the region.
Apart from exploring the linguistic aspects of the language this study is also undertaken to explore causes, level and nature of language endangerment in the Trawara Community.
A small scale sociolinguistic study was conducted from 2012 to 2014 to determine the precise nature of the language shift in...