Balochi language

Phonology

Vowels

The Balochi vowel system has at least eight vowels: five long and three short. These are , , , , , , and . The short vowels have more centralized phonetic quality than the long vowels. The variety spoken in Karachi also has nasalized vowels, most importantly and . In addition to these eight vowels, Balochi has two vowel glides, that is /aw/ and /aj/.

Consonants

The following table shows consonants which are common to both Western (Northern) and Southern Balochi. The consonants /s/, /z/, /n/, /ɾ/ and /l/ are articulated as alveolar in Western Balochi. The plosives /t/ and /d/ are dental in both dialects. The symbol ń is used to denote nasalization of the preceding vowel.

In addition, occurs in a few words in Southern Balochi. (voiceless velar fricative) in some loanwords in Southern Balochi corresponding to (voiceless uvular fricative) in Western Balochi; and (voiced velar fricative) in some loanwords in Southern Balochi corresponding to (voiced uvular fricative) in Western Balochi.

In Eastern Balochi, it is noted that the stop and glide consonants may also occur as aspirated allophones in word initial position as and . Allophones of stops in postvocalic position include for voiceless stops, and for voiced stops . are also dentalized as .

Intonation

Difference between a question and a statement is marked with the tone, when there is no question word. Rising tone marks the question and falling tone the statement. Statements and questions with a question word are characterized by falling intonation at the end of the sentence.

Questions without a question word are characterized by rising intonation at the end of the sentence.

Both coordinate and subordinate clauses that precede the final clause in the sentence have rising intonation. The final clause in the sentence has falling intonation.

Grammar

The normal word order is subject–object–verb. Similar to many other Indo-Iranian languages, Balochi also features split ergativity. The subject is marked as nominative except for the past tense constructions where the subject of a transitive verb is marked as oblique and the verb agrees with the object. Balochi, similar to many Western Iranian languages, has lost the Old Iranian gender distinctions.

Numerals

Much of the Balochi number system is identical to Persian. Below are the numbers one to ten in Balochi:

Dialects

Southern (Makrani) dialect

The Makrani dialect is spoken in the southern parts of Balochistan (notably Makran), including coastal areas such as Gwadar, Pasni, Turbat, and Karachi. The dialect (despite the higher prevalence of the Rakshani) is also spoken in some coastal areas of the Sistan-Baluchestan province in cities such as: Qasr-e Qand, Nik Shahr, Rask, Chabahar, and Bandar Abbas.

There are two main sub-dialects: the dialect of the Mandwani (northern) tribes and the dialect of the Domki (southern) tribes. The dialectal differences are not very significant. One difference is that grammatical terminations in the northern dialect are less distinct compared with those in the southern tribes.

Eastern (Soleimani) dialect

The Soleimani dialect is spoken mainly in eastern Balochistan, western Punjab, and parts of Sindh—all within Pakistan—particularly in areas such as Quetta, Kalat, Khuzdar, Lasbela, Chagai, Noshki, Dalbandin, Kharan, Mastung, the Kacchi Plains, Dera Ghazi Khan, Taunsa, Rajanpur, and Jacobabad.

While the Makrani and Rakshani dialects are close, the Soleimani dialect is often perceived as farther from the other two in terms of intelligibility. This is likely due to influence from languages such as Brahvi, Pashto, Sindhi, and Punjabi.

Western (Rakshani) dialect

The Rakshani dialect is predominantly spoken in western Balochistan, including parts of Iran and Afghanistan. Commonly spoken in the Sistan-Baluchestan province and Khorasan region within Iran. Various sub-dialects exist within the Rakshani dialect:

• Panjguri sub-dialect: spoken mainly within southern and southwestern areas of Afghanistan, around the Helmand River—however is also spoken in areas strecthing from the Kech River forming its southern border and the Rakhshan River
• Sarhadhi sub-dialect: Spoken in an area that extends from Dalbandin in Pakistan and from the northeast to Chahar Burjak in Afghanistan, and includes Merv in the Turkmenistan and Sistan in Iran, with Nosratabad in Iran, forming its southernmost part of extent.
• Saravani sub-dialect: Spoken mainly in Saravan and its surrounding areas, with Khash as its northern border and Espidan as its western border. In later works by Josef Elfenbein, Iranshahr, and Bampur are also considered to be within the Saravani dialect area.
• Lashari sub-dialect: centered on the village of Lashar, south of Iranshahr—featuring heavy influence from Persian.

Koroshi

An isolated dialect is Koroshi, which is spoken in the Qashqai tribal confederation in the Fars province. Koroshi distinguishes itself in grammar and lexicon among Balochi varieties.

Writing system

Balochi was not a written language before the 19th century, and the Persian script was used to write Balochi wherever necessary. However, Balochi was still spoken within Baloch courts.

British colonial officers first wrote Balochi with the Latin script. Following the creation of Pakistan, Baloch scholars adopted the Persian alphabet. The first collection of poetry in Balochi, Gulbang by Mir Gul Khan Nasir, was published in 1951 and incorporated the Arabic script. It was much later that Syed Zahoor Shah Hashemi wrote a comprehensive guidance on the usage of Arabic script and standardized it as the Balochi orthography in Pakistan and Iran. This earned him the title of the "father of Balochi". His guidelines are widely used in eastern and western Balochistan. In Afghanistan, Balochi is still written in a modified Arabic script based on Persian.

In 2002, a conference in Quetta was held to help standardize the script that would be used for Balochi.

Old Balochi alphabet

The following alphabet was used by Syed Zahoor Shah Hashmi in his lexicon of Balochi Syed Ganj (سَیَد گنج; lit. Syed's Treasure). Until the creation of the Balochi Standard Alphabet, it was by far the most widely used alphabet for writing Balochi, and is still used very frequently.

ا، آ، ب، پ، ت، ٹ، ج، چ، د، ڈ، ر، ز، ژ، س، ش، ک، گ، ل، م، ن، و، ہ، ھ، ء، ی، ے

Standard Perso-Arabic alphabet

The Balochi Standard Alphabet, standardized by the Balochi Academy Sarbaz, consists of 29 letters. It is an extension of the Perso-Arabic script and borrows a few glyphs from Urdu. It is also sometimes referred to as Balo-Rabi or Balòrabi. Today, it is the preferred script to use in a professional setting and by the educated.

Latin alphabet

The following Latin-based alphabet was adopted by the International Workshop on "Balochi Roman Orthography" (University of Uppsala, Sweden, 28–30 May 2000).

Alphabetical order

a, á, b, c, d, ď, e, f, g, ĝ, h, i, í, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, ř, s, š, t, ť, u, ú, v, w, x, y, z, ž, ay, aw (33 letters and 2 digraphs)

Soviet alphabet

In 1933, the Soviet Union adopted a Latin-based alphabet for Balochi as follows:

The alphabet was used for several texts, including children's books, newspapers, and ideological works. In 1938, however, the official use of Balochi was discontinued.

Cyrillic alphabet

In 1989, Mammad Sherdil, a teacher from the Turkmen SSR, approached Balochi language researcher Sergei Axenov with the idea of creating a Cyrillic-based alphabet for Balochi. Before this, the Cyrillic script was already used for writing Balochi and was used in several publications but the alphabet was not standardized. In 1990, the alphabet was finished. It included the following letters:

The project was approved with some minor changes (қ, ꝑ, and ы were removed due to the rarity of these sounds in Balochi, and о̄ was added). From 1992 to 1993, several primary school textbooks were printed in this script. In the early 2000s, the script fell out of use.