Yassi

Yassi
Template:Unicode
Created by	–
Native to	Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan
Native speakers	150 (2004)
Language family	Uralic Yassi

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. However, nowadays is seen as an Uralic language, though its exact relationship to the Uralic languages is a matter of debate.

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 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