Balti language

Classification and dialects

Historically, Buddhists in Leh have referred to all Muslims in Ladakh as Balti.

The Balti language has four variants or dialects. Despite differences in phonology and vocabulary, they are mutually intelligible. For example, to keep is yuq in other varieties, but juq in the southern dialect of Kharmang and Kargil. Similarly, milk is oma in the eastern Chorbat-Nubra, the central Khaplu, and the southern Kharmang-Kargil varieties, but ona in the western dialect of Skardu, Shigar, and Rondu valley. The four variants or dialects of Balti are:

1. Eastern dialect of Chorbat and Nubra valley
2. Central dialect of Khaplu valley
3. Western dialect of Skardu, Shigar and Rondu.
4. Southern dialect of Upper Kharmang and Kargil

Phonology

Consonants

• Allophones of include , and .
• can be realized as a flap .
• can also be retroflex .

Vowels

• varies between an open back , an open-mid back , and an open central .
• The mid can be as low as open-mid .

Orthographies

The predominant writing system currently in use for Balti is the Perso-Arabic script, although there have been attempts to revive the Tibetan script, which was used between the 8th and the 16th centuries. Additionally, there are two, nowadays possibly extinct, indigenous writing systems and there have been proposals for the adoption of Latin script- as well as Devanagari-based orthographies that were adjusted for writing Balti by the Central Institute of Indian Languages in the 1970s.

In 1985, Yusuf Hussain Abadi added four new letters to the Tibetan script and seven new letters to the Perso-Arabic script to adapt both of them to the needs of the Balti language. Two of the four added letters now stand included in the Tibetan Unicode block. Since then there has been books and documents, including the Balti translation of the Qur'an using the perso-arabic script of Balti.

Balti was written with a version of the Tibetan script from 727 AD, when Baltistan was conquered by Tibetans, until the last quarter of the 14th century, when the Baltis converted to Islam. Subsequently, the Perso-Arabic script replaced the Tibetan script, but the former had no letters for seven Balti sounds and was in vogue despite being defective. Adding the seven new letters has now made it a complete script for Balti.

Recently, a number of Balti scholars and social activists have attempted to promote the use of the Tibetan Balti or "Yige" alphabet (اِگے) with the aim of helping to preserve indigenous Balti and Ladakhi culture and ethnic identity. Following a request from this community, the September 2006 Tokyo meeting of ISO/IEC 10646 WG2 agreed to encode two characters invented by Abadi (U+0F6B TIBETAN LETTER KKA and TIBETAN U+0F6C LETTER RRA) in the ISO 10646 and Unicode standards in order to support rendering Urdu loanwords present in modern Balti using the Yige alphabet.

Perso-Arabic alphabet

Below table presents Balti language Perso-Arabic letters.

Note

• The actual letter itself doesn't yet exist in Unicode. This letter is an approximation. The correct letter is the letter «گ» with a hook attached to the top of the upper stroke.

Table below presents the aspirates, where they're written as digraphs, same is Urdu orthography, using the letter «ھ». Note that other aspirate digraphs not shown in the table below are to be expected as well, when present in loanwords of Urdu origin.

Below table shows the vowels in Balti, the representation of which would be similar to Urdu. Diacritics are usually dropped in regular writing, but can be written in order to clarify pronunciation and remove potential ambiguities.

Balti-Tibetan (Yige) Alphabet

Red Tibetan letters indicate uniquely created letters for sounds in Balti (mostly from Urdu, Persian, Arabic, or English loanwords), and red Arabic letters indicates letters whose pronunciation is merged with other Arabic letters and their only usage is for loanwords of Arabic origin.

Below table shows specific commonly used digraphs, ones that have correspondence and distinction in Balti phonology and Perso-Arabic script.

In Balti-Tibetan (Yige) script, each letter has an inherent [a] vowel. Other vowels are indicated as per the table below.

Evolution

Since Pakistan gained control of the region in 1948, Urdu words have been introduced into local dialects and languages, including Balti. In modern times, Balti has no native names or vocabulary for dozens of newly invented and introduced things; instead, Urdu and English words are being used in Balti.

Balti has retained many honorific words that are characteristic of Tibetan dialects and many other languages.

Below are a few examples:

Literature

Some epics and sagas appear in oral literature, such as the Epic of King Gesar and the stories of rgya lu cho lo bzang and rgya lu sras bu. All other literature is in verse. Balti literature has adopted numerous Persian styles of verse and vocables.

Nearly all the languages and dialects of the mountain region in the north of Pakistan, such as Pashto, Khowar and Shina, are Indo-Aryan or Iranic languages, but Balti is one of the Sino-Tibetan languages. As such, it has little in common with neighboring languages except some loanwords absorbed as a result of linguistic contact. Balti and Ladakhi are closely related.

The major issue facing Balti literature is its centuries-long isolation from Tibet and even from its immediate neighbor, Ladakh, due to political divisions and strong religious differences. Separated from its linguistic kin, Balti is under pressure from more dominant languages such as Urdu. This is compounded by the lack of a suitable means of transcription following the abandonment of its original Tibetan script. In recent couple of decades, Balti academics in Pakistan and Balti clerical scholars in Pakistan and Iran (as Balti people are Shia Muslim and thus cultrually connected with Iran's religious centers) have been working towards standardizing and unifying the Perso-Arabic script (on basis of Urdu orthography, but with additional letters); whereas other Balti academics have attempted (albeit with less popularity) to revive the Tibetan script (but with additional letters for loanwords of Urdu, Persian, Arabic, and English origin). Despite such attempts, the homogenizing pressure of Urdu on Pakistan's minority languages makes the spread of Balti literacy quite a difficult task.

Example of poetry:

Youq fangsay thalang paqzi na mandoq na mabour na
Na drolbi laming yani si soq fangse chi thobtook

— Nasir Karimi

Sample Text

Al-Fatiha (الفَاتِحَةِ)

Below is the first sura (chapter) of the Quran, Al-Fatiha, its original Arabic text, English translation, as well as the Balti translation, as published (un-edited) in 2011 by Yusuf Hussain Abadi.