98 
R. B. Shaw —On the Shighni (Ghalchah) Dialect. [No. 2, 
ly the destiny o£ the mother province, Badakhshan, to which it has been, 
from time immemorial, attached. The former seems to he the most impor¬ 
tant of the Ghalchah States, and wonderfully protected from invasion by 
natural advantages.* It would thus form a safe refuge for an aboriginal 
The valleys of the Oxus feeders which form the greater part of the 
territory of Shighnan and Roshan, open out at their heads into the high 
plains of Pamir. It will be observed that the Shighni dialect shows a 
greater affinity to that of Sarikol (in the Eastern side of Pamir) than to 
the speech of the Wakhis, notwithstanding that the latter occupy a valley 
on the same side of the main water-parting, and parallel with the Shakh- 
Darrah (Shighnan). This would show that the open Pamirs must have 
opposed less serious obstacles to inter-communication than the Western 
ridges which divide the Oxus feeders from one another, or than the narrow 
gorge of that river itself. Its local name “ Panjah,” suggests the illustra¬ 
tion of a hand with fingers outspread (as in playing the piano). It is 
obviously easier (comparing small things with great) to cross the level hack 
of the hand, than to travel at right angles across the arched fingers. 
The Shighni dialect has all the sounds known in the other Ghalchah 
dialects with the addition of one which is intermediate, and seems to explain 
the transition, between the Persian sh and the Sarikoli kh (as in German 
icli). It will have been noticed that many Persian words such as shat, 
sharminda, Padshah, become in Sarikoli khab, kharminda, Padkhdh , &c. The 
Shighni supplies the intermediate step by a sound which I do not know how 
to express (without special type) better than by the compound skh. It is the 
German eh of ich sibilated so as almost to resemble an English sh. The 
steps are plain from the sh pronounced at the back of the upper teeth with 
the front part of the tongue, to the skh a little further hack with the middle 
part of the tongue raised, and to the Ghalchah kh slightly further back 
still. This skh is unlike the Wakhi sch; for while the former is an 
attempt to sibilate the kh, the latter is an sh pronounced at the back of the 
palate, with the tongue curled back. 
THE SUBSTANTIVE. 
Singular. Plural. 
N. chid, . a house chiden . houses 
G. chid {chid- end G. Abs.), a house’s and so on all through, with 
D. chid-BU or -erd or ar -chid, to a 
house 
* See the account of Abdu’l-Subhan, given by Capt. Trotter It. E., in the Report 
of the Yarkand Mission, 1873-4. 
