Bangani (बंगाणी baṅgāṇī) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in parts of Uttarkashi district in the west of the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand, India. It has been described either as a member of Western Pahari,[1] a group of languages mostly spoken to the west in Himachal Pradesh, or as a dialect of Garhwali, a Central Pahari language. It shares between one half and two thirds of its basic vocabulary with neighbouring varieties of Garhwali and with the Western Pahari languages of Jaunsari and Sirmauri.[2]
| Bangani | |
|---|---|
| बंगाणी | |
 | |
| Native to | India |
| Region | Garhwal |
| Language family | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | bang1335 |
| ELP | Bangani |
  Bangani Approximate location of the Bangani-speaking area in India | |
| Coordinates: 31°12′N 78°24′E / 31.2°N 78.4°E | |
Play media
Centum substrate hypothesis
Bangani is of interest amongst scholars of Indo-European languages, due to some unusual features.
Since the 1980s, Claus Peter Zoller – a scholar of Indian linguistics and literature – has claimed that there is a centum language substrate in Bangani. Zoller has also suggested that Bangani has been misclassified as a dialect of Garhwali and is more closely related to the Western Pahari languages.
The substance of Zoller's claims has been rejected by George van Driem and Suhnu Sharma, in publications since 1996,[3] which claim that Zoller's data was flawed and that Bangani is an unambiguously satem language. Zoller does not accept the findings by van Driem and Sharma, and claims that there are methodological issues and factual errors in van Driem and Sharma's work.[4][5]
Support for Zoller's hypothesis and his underlying data has been offered by other linguists and Indologists, such as Anvita Abbi, Hans Henrich Hock,[6] and Koenraad Elst.[7]
References
- ^ Zoller, Claus Peter (2007). "Is Bangani a V2 language?" (PDF). European Bulletin of Himalayan Research. 31: 83–142.
- ^ Matthews, John (2008). "Jaunsari: a sociolinguistic survey". SIL Electronic Survey Reports: 12–13. Cite journal requires
|journal=(help) - ^ "Religion and Global empire". The Newsletter Issue 54. International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS). Archived from the original on 19 October 2006. Retrieved 4 September 2010.
- ^ "The van Driem Enigma Or: In search of instant facts". Retrieved 4 September 2010.
- ^ "?". Archived from the original on 28 May 2003.
- ^ Hock, Hans Henrich; Bashir, Elena, eds. (2016). The Languages and Linguistics of South Asia. doi:10.1515/9783110423303-004. ISBN 978-3-11-042330-3.
- ^ See, for example, Koenraad Elst, 2007, Asterisk in Bhāropīyasthān: Minor Writings on the Aryan Invasion Debate, Delhi, Voice of India, p. 31.
