Yassi
| Yassi | |
|---|---|
| Template:Unicode | |
| Created by | – |
| Native to | Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan |
| Native speakers | 150 (2004) |
Uralic
| |
Yassi is a Uralic language spoken in the Yas River Valley in north-eastern Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, China and Tajikistan.
Classification
For a long time, Yassi was seen as one of the languages that belong to the areal Pamir language group. Nowadays it's classified as a Uralic language, though its exact relationship to the Uralic languages is a matter of debate.
There are certain words of the basic vocabulary which show a closer relation to the Samoyedic than to the Finno-Ugric subgroup, like nǝk (PS *näk- instead of FU *kolme 'three') and swam (PS *time instead of FU *piŋe 'tooth'). However, research has shown that it's often not possible to derive these words from mainstream Proto-Samoyed: Rather, both Yassi swam 'tooth' and Proto-Samoyed *time 'tooth' seem to go back to PU *sewimä 'tooth'. Furthermore, Yassi pǝn 'comb' is assumed to be a cognate to FU *piŋe 'tooth'. Therefore, and as the subgrouping of the Uralic languages is still controversial, Yassi must remain an independent branch of Proto-Uralic.
Phonology
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | ə | o |
| Open | a | ɑ |
Yassi also has the diphthongs /ai/, /ɑi/, /əi/, /ɑw/, /aw/, /oi/, /ui/.
Consonants
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɳ | ŋ | ||||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t̪ | ʈ | k | q | ʔ | |||
| voiced | b | d̪ | ɖ | ɡ | ||||||
| Affricate | voiceless | t͡s | t͡ʃ | |||||||
| voiced | d͡z | d͡ʒ | ||||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʂ | ʃ | ç | x | h | ||
| voiced | z | ʐ | ʒ | ʝ | ɣ | |||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | |||||||
| Rhotic | r | ɺ̢ | ||||||||
The words that have been borrowed and are non-native to Yassi, are colour coded. The phonemes /q/, /f/ tend to be replaced by /k/, /p/.
Vocabulary
The huge amount of the basic vocabulary is inherited from Proto-Uralic. However, there are also ancient loans from neighboring Iranian dialects or Proto-Iranian itself. Rather recent loans into Yassi include Persian (and through that, Arabic) and Hindustani.
Numerals
| Numeral | Inherited Yassi |
Loan from Proto-Iranian |
|---|---|---|
| one | ǝs | |
| two | kas | |
| three | nǝk | |
| four | per | |
| five | wit | |
| six | špağ | |
| seven | ow | |
| eight | ksoray | at |
| nine | sowr, swor | nǝ |
| ten | kǝswit | las |
| eleven | ||
| twelve | ||
| thirteen | ||
| twenty | ||
| thirty | ||
| forty | ||
| hundred | sǝl | |
| two hundred | ||
| thousand | zǝr | |
| ten thousand | wewar |