Saving Oral Literature of Domaaki: A Severely Endangered Language
| Language | Domaaki |
| Depositor | Abdul Qadir Khan, Zafeer Hussain Kiani |
| Affiliation | University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir |
| Location | Pakistan |
| Collection ID | 0771 |
| Grant ID | SG0741 |
| Funding Body | ELDP |
| Collection Status | Collection online |
| Landing Page Handle | http://hdl.handle.net/2196/b18c395d-8635-4016-b4e9-b9bf55c261c7 |
Summary of the collection
This collection contains the documentation of Domaaki language spoken in Mominabad and Nagar regions in Gilgit Beltistan. The videos in this collection include 40 hours video recordings, 5 hours 49 min transcription, 5 hours 45 min English translation, 3 hours 8 minutes glossing and a pictorial Domaaki-English cultural Glossary (200 pics).
Group represented
The Dooma [do:ma] live in the remote Hunza and Nagar valleys in the Karakoram mountain range, which runs along the border of Pakistan, India, China and Afghanistan. The valleys are located in Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan Province, which is part of the greater Kashmir area that is the subject of longstanding territorial conflict between Pakistan and India. The Dooma migrated there from current-day India several centuries ago to serve as blacksmiths and musicians to the local rulers (Lorimer 1939:7; Weinreich 2010). These occupations were considered inferior, placing the Dooma in the lowest social caste, and until the 1970s they were forbidden to perform any other job (Schmid 2007:112, Weinreich 2010). Unsurprisingly, male Dooma traditionally became multilingual in order to communicate with their neighbors, and today all Dooma speak Burushaski and/or Shina, along with Urdu (Weinreich 2015).
Language information
Domaaki ([doma:ki], aka Dumaki, Domaki; ISO 639-3: dmk) is a severely endangered language spoken in two villages in northern Pakistan. It belongs to the central zone of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian group, which is part of the Indo-European language family. It is believed to be a close relative of Romani and Domari, spoken by the traditionally nomadic ethnic groups of Europe and the Middle East respectively. This link is supported by the cognate ethnonyms dom (Domaaki), rom (Romani) and lom (Domari), some shared phonological innovations, and the nomads’ traditional work as blacksmiths and musicians (Buddruss 1983, Lesný 1941, Lorimer 1939:20). Scholars agree with this connection (e.g. Masica 1991:427, Matras 2002:31), though no in-depth comparative studies have been done. Some sources call Domaaki a Dardic language, likely because of its many loanwords from the neighboring Shina language, but this classification is incorrect (Backstrom 1992:104). No systematic survey of language use has been done in these communities. Some published estimates list 500 Dooma (Backstrom 1992, Kreutzmann 2005), but these appear to focus on ethnicity rather than actual speakers. Observations made in 2002 and 2004 (Rahman 2003, Weinreich 2008), estimate that there are only 40 speakers of the Nagar dialect, and approximately 300 of the Hunza dialect. The majority of them are elderly; and children are no longer taught the language (Buddruss 1984; Weinreich 2015). Based on these data, Unesco classifies Domaaki as severely endangered (Moseley 2010), while Ethnologue rates it as moribund (Lewis et al. 2016). Dr. Abdul Qadir Khan and Zaffer visited Hunza and Nagar in 2017 and 2018 and recently in 2024 found only two speakers of the Nagar dialect and thirteen speakers of the Hunza dialect in the oldest and most fluent generation, aged 70 years and above, with several times that number among middle aged Dooma, though the latter do not speak it on a daily basis. There are no monolingual speakers; all speak Burushaski or Shina if not Urdu.
Collection contents
The collection includes 40 hours video and audio recordings. Of the deposited data 06 hours have been time-aligned translation into English and 03 hours glossing. The data includes:
- History
- Everyday Conversations
- Interviews
- Poetry
- Life stories
- Myths
- Festivals
- Songs
Collection history
This project is financed by ELDP, awarded to Abdul Qadir Khan, professor at the University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Muzaffarabad for the period from November 2023-October 2024. The data was collected from elderly Domaaki/Dawoodi language speakers from two villages namely Mominabad in Hunza district and Nagar khas from Nagar district of Gilgit-Beltistan. Data was collected in April/May 2024.
References
Buddruss, G. (1983). Domáaki þhot “Ton” Mit Beiträgen zur Historischen Lautlehre. Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft, 42, 5-21.
Kreutzmann, H. (2005). Linguistic diversity in space and time: A survey in the Eastern Hindukush and Karakorum. Himalayan Linguistics, 4. Retrieved from http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/HimalayanLinguistics/articles/HLJ04.html. (Accessed: 25 September 2008)
Masica, C. P. (1991). The Indo-Aryan languages. Cambridge University Press.
Rahman, T. (2003). Language policy, multilingualism, and language vitality in Pakistan. Retrieved from http://www.sil.org/asia/ldc/parallel_papers/tariq_rahman.pdf. (Accessed: 30 September 2008)
Weinreich, M. (2008). Two varieties of Domaakí. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 158, 299-316.
Weinreich, M. (2010). Language shift in northern Pakistan: The case of Domaakí and Pashto.
Acknowledgement and citation
The users of this collection should acknowledge, Dr. Abdul Qadir Khan, Dr. Zafeer Hussain Kiani and their team, Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) for funding, Mr. Maraj and Salahuddin who worked as language consultants and for all those speakers who participated in this project.
To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:
Khan, Abdul Qadir, and Zafeer Hussain Kiani. 2023. Saving Oral Literature of Domaaki: A Severely Endangered Language. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/3570962c-4afd-4e83-b5df-cd7563556c25. Accessed on [insert date here].
