Official status

Ishkashimi is a threatened language that does not have a status of official language in the regions of its use.^[3]

Language domain

The Ishkashimi language vitality, despite the positive attitudes towards the language, is declining due to increasing use by native speakers of other languages like Dari in Afghanistan and Tajik in Tajikistan in a variety of domains, such as education, religious, private domain and others.^[10] For example, due to Dari being the language of the education system, almost all Ishkashimi speakers, and especially the younger ones, have high Dari proficiency.^[10] Education can get complicated with the use of two languages, therefore schools prefer to use Dari. Instructions are solely in Dari, but rarely will teachers speak Ishkashimi to students for explanations. Similar to schools, religion is widely practiced with Dari especially for preaching and prayers, and when it comes to mass media and the government, Dari is exclusively used.^[10] Meanwhile, in the private and community domains both Dari and Ishkashimi languages are used equally.^[10] In Tajikistan areas Ishkashimi is a first choice for communication between family members and in private conversations between friends and coworkers, however the use of Tajik and Wakhi languages in other domains leads to decline in Ishkashimi use.^[4] There is an understanding in the Ishkashimi speaking community that the language can face a possible extinction because of its limited use .^[10]

Vowels

There are seven vowel phonemes: a, e, i, o, u, u, and ə ^[2]

Consonants

There are thirty two consonant phonemes:^[11]

Special features

The use of the consonant [h] in the language is optional.^[2]

Stress

There are many exceptions, but as a rule stress falls on the last syllable in a word with multiple syllables. Sometimes, as a result of the rhythm in the phrase, the stress will freely move to syllables other than the last syllable.^[2]

Morphology

• Grammatical gender is not used.
• There is no variation between adjectives and no distinction in number.
• The expression of comparatives and superlatives is done through syntax and adverbial modifiers, while pre- and postpositions and suffixes are used for case relations.^[2]

Syntax

The word order in Ishkashimi is SOV (Subject–object–verb), however the order can be influenced by the varieties of the information structure in the sentences.^[12]

Borrowed words

A significant part of Ishkashimi vocabulary contains words and syntactic structures that were borrowed from other languages, the reason behind it is a regular and close contact of Ishkashimi speakers with other languages.^[12] For example, the history of the focus particle "Faqat" (Eng: only) shows that it was borrowed from Persian language, which was earlier borrowed by Persian from Arabic.^[12]

Taboo words

Taboo words were formed and added into Ishkashimi language as a result of use of ancient epithets and of derivation of the words from other languages, often followed by the change of their meaning and pronunciation. Some of the taboo Ishkashimi words, which are also similarly seen as taboo in other Pamir languages, are:^[13]

• Xirs - for bear
• Sabilik - for wolf
• Urvesok - for fox
• Si - for hare
• Purk - for mouse/rat

Written sources

The first attempts by linguists to collect and organize data about the Ishkashimi language were made around the beginning of the 19th century, and were later continued by Russian and Ishkashimi linguists, like T. Pakhalina.^[14] Before any systematic description and documentation of Ishkashimi language, the researchers collected some random vocabulary examples and mentioned the language in the works about Iranian languages.^[10] Only in the end of the twentieth century linguists created a more comprehensive description of Ishkashimi language.^[10]