Parachi (Parāčī) is an Iranian language. Parachi is spoken by some 600 individuals of the Parachi ethnic group in eastern Afghanistan, mainly in the upper part of Nijrab District, northeast of Kabul, out of a total ethnic Parachi population of some 5,000.
It is closely related to the Ormuri language of Kaniguram in South Waziristan, Pakistan. Parachi is usually classified as a member of the Southeastern group of the Eastern Iranian languages,[3] although this is an areal group rather than a genetical one.
Classification
Parach is an Iranian language belonging to the Ormuri-Parachi subgroup.[4] Glottolog classifies Parachi within the Ormuri-Parachi subgroup of Iranian languages.[4] Similarly, Ethnologue also classifies it within the Ormur-Parachi subgroup, however, places both Parachi and Ormuri among the Norhwestern Iranian languages.[5]
Despite being spoken in the eastern part of the Iranian language area, Parachi, similar to Ormuri, shares some common islogloss and linguistic and structural features with some Northwestern Iranian languages such as Zaza, Semnani, Sangsari.[6]
References
- ^ Parachi at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin (eds.). “Ormuri-Parachi”. Glottolog . Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- ^ Nicholas Sims-Williams, Eastern Iranian languages, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, 2010
- ^ a b Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin (eds.). “Ormuri”. Glottolog . Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- ^ “Ormuri-Parachi”. Ethnologue. Retrieved 9 April 2026.
- ^ Lecoq, P. (1989) Le classement des langues irano-aryennes occidentales, in: C.-H. de Fouchecour I Pb. Gignoux (Hg.), Etudes irano-aryennes offertes a Gilbert Lazard, Paris pp. 247-264.
Further reading
- Ефимов, В. А. (2009). Язык парачи: грамматический очерк; тексты; словарь [Parachi language: Grammar, texts, dictionary] (in Russian). Moskva: Восточная литература. ISBN 978-5-02-036407-3.
- KIEFFER, CHARLES (1977). “The Approaching End of the Relict Southeast Iranian Languages Ōrmuri and Parāči in Afghanistan”. International Journal of the Sociology of Language (12): 71–100. doi:10.1515/ijsl.1977.12.71.
- Trofimov, Artem (2019). “On the place of Parachi and Ormuri among the Iranian languages according to the data of annotated Swadesh lists”. Journal of Language Relationship. 16 (3–4): 277–292. doi:10.31826/jlr-2019-163-411..
- Трофимов, А. А. (2021). “Ударение множественного числа имен с показателем -ån в парачи и его связь с праиранской акцентуацией” [Stress position of nominal plurals in -ån in the Parachi language and its connection with the accent in Proto-Iranian]. Journal of Language Relationship (in Russian). 19 (3–4): 210–232. doi:10.31826/jlr-2021-193-407..
- Трофимов, А. А. (2022). “Ударение в языках парачи и ормури в связи с афганским и его значение для иранской реконструкции” [The accent in Parachi and Ormuri compared to Pashto and its significance for the reconstruction of Proto-Iranian]. Journal of Language Relationship (in Russian). 20 (3–4): 222–252. doi:10.31826/jlr-2023-203-407.