- Official language in
- India
- Script
- Arabic
Where it's spoken
India's constitution lists Kashmiri among the languages of its Eighth Schedule. A separate Act of Parliament, the Jammu and Kashmir Official Languages Act, says that from a date the Administrator appoints by notification, the Kashmiri, Dogri, Urdu, Hindi and English languages shall be the official languages to be used for all or any of the official purposes of the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The Act also lets English continue to be used for the administrative and legislative purposes for which it was already used.
Sources
- Constitution of India (1949, as amended through 2023; text as reproduced by the Comparative Constitutions Project) — Eighth Schedule, item 8
- The Jammu and Kashmir Official Languages Act, 2020 (No. 23 of 2020), The Gazette of India Extraordinary, 27 September 2020 — Section 3 and its first proviso
Script & pronunciation
This app's Kashmiri cards are written in the Arabic script. The Unicode Standard's Arabic chapter includes letters and marks made specifically for Kashmiri. It says that Arabic letter Kashmiri yeh "is used in Kashmiri text to indicate that the preceding consonantal sound is palatalized," and that "South Asian languages such as Urdu and Kashmiri use yeh barree to represent the /e/ vowel." It also describes the wavy hamza below as "an additional vowel mark used in Kashmiri."
The app's card for "Water", پونؠ, ends in the Kashmiri yeh. The app's card for "I don't know", مےٚ چھُنہٕ پَتا, begins with a word written with yeh barree (مےٚ, Me).
Sources
- The Unicode Standard, Version 16.0.0 — Core Specification, Chapter 9: Middle East-I (Arabic) — Section 9.2.1 (Additional Vowel Marks) and section 9.2.4 (Letter yeh)
Grammar essentials
An academic study of Kashmiri syntax describes the finite verb as appearing "in clause-second position in declarative matrix clauses" and says that "in root as well as most subordinate contexts the finite verb invariably occupies the clause-second position." In the app's card for "It's hot today", اَز چھُ تۆت, the "to be" word چھُ (chu) follows the opening word اَز ("today"), and the card's note describes this as V2 order, with the verb after the fronted adverb.
In the card for "I understand", بہٕ چھُس سَمجان, the "to be" word carries a person ending (چھُس, chus, glossed as "am", 1st person singular masculine). The card's note says a woman says چھَس instead of چھُس. The negative card, بہٕ چھُسنہٕ سَمجان ("I don't understand"), adds a negative clitic to the same word, and the card's word breakdown glosses it as "am not (copula 1sg m. + negative clitic)".
The card for "Do you speak English?", تُہِی چھِوا اَنٛگریٖزی کَتھ کَران؟, ends the "to be" word with a question clitic: its word breakdown glosses چھِوا as "are (copula + question clitic -ā)", and its note says a yes/no question is made with the clitic -ā on the copula.