Waziri Pashto: the speech of the Wazir and Mahsud

At a glance

• Waziri is the Pashto of the Wazir and Mahsud of North and South Waziristan and of the Wazir of Bannu district. The classic description is J. G. Lorimer's Grammar and Vocabulary of Waziri Pashto (1902). [1, 3]

• Its mark is a shift of three vowels. In the description Lorimer gave, the ā and ū of standard Pashto are "for the most part" o and ī, so plār "father" is plor, mor "mother" is mer and lur "daughter" is lir. [1, 3]

• The shift is irregular. Lorimer found it varying from tribe to tribe and even from village to village, and says the Mahsud and the Wano Darwesh Khel differ less from Peshawar speech in pronunciation than the other Waziri groups. [1]

• The consonants ښ and ږ are said as sh and zh, as at Quetta. Waziri also changes some other consonants: Peshawar bega "evening" is wega. [1, 3]

• Lorimer wrote Waziri in Roman letters because it was seldom written, and Ibrahim Khan, writing in the Pashto Academy's journal in 2021, says the Pashto alphabet does not suit its vowels. [1, 4]

Where Waziri is spoken

Waziri is the speech of Waziristan and of the Wazir settled in Bannu. Anne Boyle David, in her 2014 grammar of Pashto and its dialects, places it in North and South Waziristan and in Bannu district. [3] The people are described in the Wazir and the country in Waziristan and Bannu.

Linguists have given it more than one label. Kieffer called the group it belongs to the middle dialects, using the Pashto word manjanay (منځنۍ), and David follows him: she calls them M and writes that they are noted mainly for how their vowels differ from the other four dialects. [3] George Grierson, in the Linguistic Survey of India in 1921, gave specimens of what he called the south-western Pashto spoken by Waziris, two from Bannu and two from Waziristan itself. [2] David reports that Grierson also gave Waziri a word list of its own beside the Peshawar and Kandahar ones. [3]

The barrister Ibrahim Khan, writing in the Pashto Academy's journal in 2021, puts Waziri and Khattak speech in a central division. Its ښ is a postalveolar sh and it has the vowel shift. [4] David's middle group also holds the Dzadrani of Khost, described in South-eastern Pashto: Khost, Paktia and the Karlanri speech. [3]

Who wrote it down

Lorimer was a British civil servant who signed his introduction from Miranshah in the Tochi valley on 1 February 1902. He wrote that the book was begun in the Tochi, finished at a distance from the frontier, and made for officers who already knew the Pashto of Peshawar. [1] He took the speech of the Mohmit Khel Waziris of the middle Tochi as his standard, and the book drew on many speakers: he names the maliks Khair Muhammad of the Hathi Khel of Bannu, Gul Husen of the Mohmit Khel of Tal, Nabbi Khan of the Madda Khel of the Kazha and Sal Muhammad of the Dawar of Muhammad Khel. [1] He added that Dauri, Mahsud and other forms would be found in it, and that the phrases were taken from the lips of living Waziris. [1]

Lorimer wrote Waziri in Roman letters. His reason was that Waziri was seldom written, that people sent letters through mullahs who wrote in Hindustani or Persian, and that the Arabic script has too few signs for its vowels. [1] Ibrahim Khan, a Pashtun writing in 2021, reaches the same point from the other side. He writes that the Pashto alphabet "is not suited to the intricacies of Waziri vowels" and asks readers to look at his transliteration. [4]

Later work builds on him. David's grammar draws on Lorimer, on the fieldwork of Hallberg in 1992 at Wana in South Waziristan, Miran Shah in North Waziristan, Lakki Marwat, Bannu and Karak, and on a native speaker. [3] Khan quotes Josef Elfenbein, Corey Miller and the Pashto Academy's Yousaf Khan Jazab, who published a study of the Karlanri varieties. [4] Two Pashtun scholars of the Academy, Ayatullah Khan Wazir and Jazab, wrote in the journal Pashto in 2021 that Lorimer's and Grierson's work on Waziri, a hundred and twenty years old, is still thought correct. They add that the Wazir of Waziristan and Bannu all speak Waziri with only minor differences of local accent. [5]

The vowels

Lorimer put the shift in a footnote. "To speak generally," he wrote, "the ā and ū of standard Pashto are represented for the most part by o and ī respectively in the Waziri dialects." The o of standard Pashto "and of the Mahsud dialect" is often ö in the Darwesh Khel dialects and é in Dauri. [1] He added that there is no consistent rule of change.

David sets the same three changes in a table. Standard plār "father" is plor in Waziri, mor "mother" is mer and lur "daughter" is lir. [3] She describes two processes. The open ā is raised to o, and o and u are fronted to e and i. [3] She notes three limits. A word may have no change, the change may be optional, and speakers may use a vowel half way between. Lorimer's own spelling shows all three: he writes myasht "month" with no change, gives two forms of a word for a long purse, and uses ö and ü for sounds she takes to lie between o and e, and u and i. [3]

Khan gives the sound of the first change. The unrounded ā of Kandahar and Yusufzai becomes a rounded vowel, which Elfenbein records as /ɔː/ in North Waziri and /ɒː/ in South Waziri. [4] Khan's own recording of a 78-year-old speaker from Bannu says "father" as پلور plor, a long rounded vowel, and he concludes from the recording that Elfenbein was right to say Bannuchi mainly goes with North Waziri. [4] A Marwat speaker in the same article says plār, with the unshifted vowel. [4]

Georg Morgenstierne described the same area for the Encyclopaedia Iranica. From the Afridi to the Waziri, he wrote, o changes further into ȯ, ȫ and ɛ, with Waziri mō/ɛ̄r for "mother", and ā rounds to â or å. [6] In Waziri, he adds, ū becomes ī, as in līr "daughter", and the change "must have taken place" before Pashto lost the difference between long and short ī and ū. [6] In the same area he also noted another change, ē for a, in špēğ "six" and wrēj "day". [6]

The rain gives a Waziri word with its own vowel. Khan, who heard the recording of a Waziri speaker, writes the word as wör, with a front rounded vowel like the French vowel in beurre, which is how Lorimer wrote it. [4] He gives the sentence وېر وریږي, Wör warīzhī, "It is raining". [4]

The consonants

Lorimer gives no Pashto script, but David infers from his vocabulary that Waziri says ښ as sh and ږ as zh, which puts it with the Quetta dialect. [3] Khan's table agrees for sh. [4] At Dzadrani in Khost, by contrast, she gives palatal sounds for the same letters. [3]

Lorimer gave a few rough correspondences between Peshawar and Waziri consonants, with the warning that they are "of uncertain and irregular application". The b, m, n, k and w of Peshawar Pashto often become w, w, l, kw and y. [1] His examples:

• bégā "evening" is wégā

• mélma "guest" is wulma

• ngharé "fireplace" is lgharai

• kunda "widow" is kwunda

• nwar "sun" is myèr or lmèr

• obe, with an initial vowel, is yébö "water", because words beginning with a vowel often begin with y [1]

He also noted an n put in after a vowel, as in maudat for madad "help", and says the name Anwar becomes Almar. [1] David's list agrees on wega, on nmar against lmar "sun", and on lār "road" becoming lyār. [3] Morgenstierne has the same sun word as nwar, nmar, lmer across dialects. [6]

Words and numbers

Waziri lacks some everyday words of Peshawar speech. Lorimer's example is gwashai for "separate", where Peshawar says byal. [1] He wrote that the word loy, "great", does not exist in Waziri proper and was not understood by some Waziris. [1] His vocabulary glosses lwar as "high" and as "hard, harsh". [1]

Numbers differ in a few places. David lists Waziri yo "one", owa "seven" and wota "eight" for the standard yaw, uwa and ata. [3] Lorimer has pīnze "five" and shpéẓh "six", with ordinals pīnzam and shpéẓham. [1] David gives the counting by scores that Waziri shares with the other middle dialects: dre kam owa shala, "three less than seven score", is 137. [3]

Lorimer's vocabulary also holds the Waziri welcome and a few sayings. Harkalla rosha! is "come always!", which he marks as the Waziri welcome. [1] Hawo chaléẓhī is "the air is moving", meaning there is a breeze. [1]

Pronouns and the verb "to be"

The pronouns are where a Peshawar speaker first hears the difference. Lorimer's tables give ze "I", mizh "we", te "you" (one person) and tus or tosé "you" (several). The oblique forms, used for the agent of a past verb and with prepositions, are mo or mi "me", to or di "you", and mizh and tus unchanged. [1] David's tables for the middle dialects give the same set: za and miz for "I" and "we", ta and tós(e) for "you", mo and to in the oblique. [3] Morgenstierne thought Waziri tus "you" was probably from an Indo-Aryan source. [6]

Lorimer also gave three invariable forms, ro for the first person, der for the second and wer for the third, which express interest in or connection with the person. [1] His example sentences show how the pronouns work:

• Mo yo zerk wuwīsht, "I shot a chikore", with mo as the agent. [1]

• De mo plor, "my father", and Plor mi mer shan, "my father died". [1]

• Dāsé werta wuwyaiya, "tell him so". [1]

The verb "to be" has its own forms in the present: yan "I am", yé "you are", dai (he) or do (she) "is", and in the plural yī, yéstai, dī. The past is wan, wé, wan or wa, and in the plural wī, wéstai, wī for men or wé for women. [1] Waziri also has a third-person form wī that Lorimer says means "is, or are, habitually", or "may be". [1]

Nouns, gender and size

Lorimer found that Waziri uses the singular as a collective, so a speaker says "the locust has eaten my crops". [1] Names of solid substances and liquids are treated as plurals: pai shé dī is "the milk is good". [1] After a number the noun takes an ending -a, which Lorimer called a numeral case: dwa sika mi waheli dī "I struck two blows". [1]

Gender carries size. A masculine noun is large, the feminine small and an intensive feminine very small. Lorimer's examples are kéṭ, "a fortified house or group of houses", kéṭa, "a single room of a house", and the bird words marghe, margha and marghai, from a largish bird to a still smaller one. [1] The vocative has its own ending: é plora! "oh father", é saraiya! "oh man". [1]

A page of continuous Waziri

Lorimer closed the book with the parable of the prodigal son, "done into Waziri Pashto with interlinear literal English translation", and a narrative he called "Story of Waziri Life". [1] The opening of the parable, in his Roman letters, is:

De yawa sarī dwa zamen wī.

Of one man two sons were.

The second line is Lorimer's own word-for-word gloss. [1] The parable goes on this way to the end, with every Waziri word set over its English.

How Waziri sounds to others

Lorimer, writing for British officers, told those who had learnt Pashto at Peshawar that the gap to Waziri was "hardly less than that which separates broad Scots from cockney English". A Pathan of the northern border, he wrote, would not follow everything he heard among Waziris and could not always make himself understood by the villagers. [1] That is the view of one outside observer. The Pashtun scholars Ayatullah Khan and Jazab describe the Waziri of the Wazir as one speech with minor differences of local accent. [5]

Lorimer also showed the differences inside Waziri. The Mahsud and the Wano Darwesh Khel, he wrote, "differ considerably less from the Pashto of Peshawar" in pronunciation than the other varieties, while resembling them in grammar and vocabulary. [1] His vocabulary entry for lwar has an example sentence: the Waziri dialect is hard and that of the Bannuchis soft. [1] Grierson wrote that the vowels of Waziri closely resemble those of Bannuchi Pashto. [2] Khan's recording of a Bannu speaker, with a rounded vowel in plor, supports Elfenbein's view that Bannuchi mainly goes with North Waziri. [4]

Lorimer also raised the question of whether Waziri is an old form or a worn one. He thought the use of the old preposition pattern wa ... ta, which he found in Khushal Khan Khattak and Abdur Rahman, the full inflection of the past participle for gender and number, and the few borrowed words "might be held to show" that Waziri is nearer the speech of the original Pathans than the Peshawar dialect. [1] He answered a suggestion that forms such as ko from the verb kel show Waziri to be worn down, by pointing to Lowland Scots, which keeps some shortened words that English does not. [1] The wider picture of how Waziri sits among the other Pashto dialects is in Pashto dialects: soft and hard speech, and the neighbouring sounds are described in Yusufzai Pashto, Kandahari Pashto and Central Ghilzai Pashto.