Yassi

Yassi
yāssǝy sor
Created by	–
Native to	Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan
Native speakers	150 (2004)
Language family	Uralic (?) (Para-?)Samoyedic Yassi

Yassi is a 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 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.

Many toponyms in the Yassi speaking area are of unknown origin. They are neither Uralic nor Indo-European. Connections to Burushaski have not been verified.

Three Layers Hypothesis

According to Vladimir Churbanov, Yassi exhibits several layers of different idioms, denying Yassi being a genuine Uralic language. Instead, it's more probable that Yassi is a language isolate with a Uralic (Para-Proto-Samoyed?) and a Proto-Iranian layer. Unlike other linguists, who argue that Yassi is a Uralic language which has adopted vocabulary from an isolate autochtonous substrate language and Proto-Iranian, Churbanov states all the isolated words in Yassi actually constitute the oldest part of the tongue.

Words with certain peculiarities which cannot be of Iranian origin are part of the origin lexicon. This conspicuousness consists of:

• The sound γ (< Proto-Yassi *g, but there is no g in Proto-Uralic)
• Verbalized adjectives ("to be cold" instead of "cold")

The following words therefore belong to original "Proto-Yassi", as no connection to other languages could have been shown so far:

• γirpaw: River Ghirpa(w), a tributary to the Yas River
• kām: sand
• korg: to be dry
• rirg: snow
• tan: to be cold
• toγ: belly

Churbanov argues Proto-Yassi people came into contact with Uralians when the Proto-Uralians still were one people:

• aw: to eat (< PU *sewe-)
• ğirm: eye (< PU *śilmä)
• mat: house (< PU *mättɜ)
• mǝn: to go (< PU *mene-)

When the Yassi people went southwards into their nowaday homeland, the 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, that's hard to tell.

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

In recent times, Yassi adopted Perso-Arabic vocabulary common to all idioms in the region:

• kitāb: book

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/.

Dialects

Slight differences in pronunciation and vocabulary show that Yassi can be divided in to 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. 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.

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 also the quite regular loss of the first vowel in the oblique cases (prepositional and genitives cases singular and plural as well as accusative plural). For the word ǝx̌t 'son', the putative Proto-Uralic origin is given in brackets:

Singular

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

Plural

• nominative: ǝx̌tǝl ('sons') (< PU *irkä-t)
• accusative: x̌tal ('sons') (< PU *irkä-t-äm)
• prepositional: x̌tat ('to the sons') (< PU *irkä-t-tä)
• genitive: x̌talǝy ('of the sons') (< PU *irkä-t-äk)

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

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		sǝl
two hundred
thousand		zǝr
ten thousand		wewar