Yassi

Yassi
yāssǝy sor
Created by	–
Native to	Afghanistan, China, Pakistan
Native speakers	164 (1979)
Language family	Uralic (?) (Para-?)Samoyedic Yassi

Yassi is a language spoken in the Yas River Valley in north-eastern Afghanistan, northern Pakistan and western China.

Classification

For a long time, Yassi had been seen as one of the languages that belong to the areal Pamir language group. Nowadays it's usually 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'), mǝkt (PS *mǝktut instead of FU *kutte 'six') 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 classified an independent branch of Proto-Uralic.

Dialects

Slight differences in pronunciation and vocabulary show that Yassi can be divided in two mutually intelligible dialects. One surrounding the headwaters of River Yas, the other in the lower valley.

The former dialect has preserved various conservative peculiarities, whereas the latter has been influenced more deeply by neighboring Iranian languages. Today there’s also a cultural barrier between the two dialects, as the Yassi people in the lower valley have adopted Islam in the last two centuries. There are gradually assimilating into the Muslim-majority religiously and linguistically. However, as far as the dichotomy in the vocabulary is concerned, it seems to have existed for a long time, because Iranian loanwords have undergone sound changes specific to Yassi. The isolated Upper-Yassis preserve their traditional society, with both Yassi language and religion.

Speakers

Nowadays, more speakers use Upper Yassi though its area is less populated than the Lower Yas valley. It’s because Lower Yassis are assimilating into the Muslim-majority society and take over Wakhi.

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/.

Grammar

Yassi is a S-O-V language, though the word order is not as strict as in English . Adjectives come before nouns. Nouns and adjectives are inflected for number (sing./plur.) and case (nominative, accusative, prepositional and genitive). There is no gender distinction.

Cases

Unlike other Uralic languages which have kept an agglutinative case system, the Yassi declension displays an inflectional type close to Indo-European idioms. All the endings are genuinely inherited, though. The transition from agglutination to inflection is the consequence of far-reaching sound changes Yassi has been subjected to. In this respect notice the occasional loss of the first vowel in the oblique cases (prepositional and genitives cases singular and plural as well as accusative plural). The reason is the different stress in Proto-Yassi: The nominative of ‘mother’ was áma (> am), but the prepositional was ‘amáta’ (> mal). However, this loss affects mostly a and ā; i remains. For the word ix̌t 'son', the putative Proto-Uralic origin is given in brackets:

Singular

• nominative: mǝ ('I') am ('mother') ix̌t ('son') (< PU *irkä)
• accusative: mǝn ('me') am ('mother') ix̌t ('son') (< PU *irkä-m)
• prepositional: min ('to me') mal ('to the mother') ix̌tal ('to the son') (< PU *irkä-tä)
• genitive: mǝnǝy ('mine') amǝy ('mother's') ix̌tǝy ('son's') (< PU *irkä-k)

Plural

• nominative: amǝl (‘mothers’) ix̌tǝl ('sons') (< PU *irkä-t)
• accusative: mal (‘mothers’) ix̌tal ('sons') (< PU *irkä-t-äm)
• prepositional: mat (‘to the mothers’) ix̌tat ('to the sons') (< PU *irkä-t-tä)
• genitive: malǝy (‘of the mothers’) ix̌talǝy ('of the sons') (< PU *irkä-t-äk)

Vocabulary

The huge amount of the basic vocabulary is inherited from Proto-Uralic. However, there are also loanwords from an ancient language related to modern Burushaski, from Proto-Iranian and, only some hundred years ago, Tibetan. Even more recent loans include Persian (and through that, Arabic), Pamir languages and Hindustani. Many toponyms in the Yassi speaking area are of unknown origin. They are neither Uralic nor Indo-European. Some, though not all, may have connections to Burushaski. It’s not entirely clear whether these Burushaski-like words were integrated into Yassi before the Indo-Iranian vocabulary or not:

• kǝbo: cotton (< PYassi *kapāsa, cf. Burushaski γupas, Vedic karpāsa)
• pya: pear (< PYassi *pisā, cf. Burushaski pheṣo)
• son: blind (< PYassi *čāna, cf. Burushaski śon, Vedic kāṇa)
• Yin: a thorp at the well of the Yas River (< PYassi *sina, cf. PYeniseian *siɁn ‘well, spring’)

As more and more researchers think that Burushaski and Yeniseian idioms are genetically related, the last example could prove that (Para-?)Proto-Burushaski still used a cognate to Proto-Yeniseian *siɁn. Like the Indo-Iranians, the Yassis integrated many words from the language of the BMAC culture. The word ǝga tells us that Yassis had contact with the people of the BMAC before the Indians and Iranians had.

• ǝga: sand (< PYassi *sikā, cf. BMAC *sikā, note that in Yassi, this word has undergone the sound change s > h > ø, whereas the Iranian languages, which also have PIIr. *s > h, show s in this word)
• Kǝzerm: a thorp in the Upper Yas valley (< PYassi *kuhūzarimiya ‘Village of the Moon Goddess’, cf. Bur. kuá, γuá ‘new moon’, Vedic kuhū and BMAC *jharmiya)

When the Yassi people went southwards into their nowaday homeland, they met Indo-Europeans, however it is not clear if they were Indo-Iranians or Iranians. Most favor the latter, but as Yassi has strangely undergone very similar sound changes as other (Eastern) Iranians tongues, it's hard to tell. (Indo-)Iranian loanwords are a bit younger than Yenisey-Burushaski and BMAC words.

• lorg: wood (< PI *dāruka-)
• maṇa: apple (< PI *amarnā-)
• pwaštay: book (< PI *paustaka-)
• slǝ: hundred (< PI *satam)

In recent times, Yassi adopted Perso-Arabic vocabulary common to all idioms in the region. They are naturally more widespread in the Muslim-majority Lower Yas valley.

• dost: friend
• kitāb: book

Numerals

The Iranian numerals from 6 to 10 aren't widely used except for 'las' which is common in the whole Yassi area. Foreign numerals tend to be used more often in the Lower Yas valley.

Numeral	Inherited Yassi	Loan from Proto-Iranian
one	ǝs
two	kas
three	nǝk
four	per
five	wit
six	mǝkt	špağ
seven	nkorǝ, nkor	ow
eight	ksorǝy	at
nine	sowr, swor	nǝ
ten	kǝswit	las
eleven
twelve
thirteen
twenty
thirty
forty
hundred		slǝ
two hundred
thousand		zǝr
ten thousand		wewar