Re: USAGE: Unusual language

Hi,

On Tue, 13 Oct 1998, Tom Wier wrote:

> I need some help gathering information about a rather unusual language.
> The language is spoken in India, and seems to be some sort of Gujarat
> correlate to Urdu, that is, the language bears the same relationship to
> Gujarat that Urdu does to Hindi:  it's based grammatically (I think) on
> Gujarat, but has a large infusion of Arabic lexical items, as I think it is
> spoken mainly by Muslims there. The names it seems to go by are:
>
> 1. dawat-ni-zabaan
> 2. lisan-ud-dawat
Perhaps these names apply to a transitional dialect between Sindhi and
Gujarati, spoken by Muslims. Dialectal variations among religious
communities exist in Gujarati (Hindus, Muslims and Parsis) but the
predominant variations are between literary and colloquial forms. The
standard Vicholi dialect of Sindhi is spoken in the Sind province of
Pakistan, and has a large number of Arabic/Perisan loadwords. The Kacchi
("Kutchee") dialect is spoken in the regions of Rann of Kutch and
Kathiawar peninsula in the state of Gujarat, India. Muslims use the Arabic
script while Hindus use a form that closely resembles the Devana^gari
script, like Gujarati. All these languages including Rajasthani, Lahnda,
Urdu and Panjabi are classed as Indo-Aryan, but except perhaps for
Rajasthani, all the others show strong Islamic lexical influence due to
Muslim rule for many centuries.

Regards,
skrintha