Re: Dardic & Nuristani.

Yes, the links are useful -- as were their link pages. This link in particular will tell you more about the words Dard, Dardic and Dardistan that you probably ever wanted to know:

http://www.monitor.net/~jmko/karakoram/dard.htm

Essentially, the term is purely geographic, describing the region in far northeastern Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, as well as Indian Kashmir. It is a serious error to use the words in an ethnic sense. You cannot speak of *a* Dardic language, but one can speak of the Dardic languages, in the same sense you can speak of Nigerian or South African languages. Some of the languages spoken here are not even Indo-European; besides Tibetan languages, there is Burushaski, an isolate with no demonstrable relationship to any other langauge.

'Dardistan' is one candidate for a place that's 'at the end of the world'.

Mark.

From: Piotr Gasiorowski

Yes, some of the languages traditionally subsumed under "Dardic" (once a purely geographical grouping) are now classified as Indic (these include Kashmiri and Khowar); the remaining ones seem to be "basal Indo-Iranian", i.e. neither Indic nor Iranian (it's difficult to tell if this "Nuristani branch" is monophyletic).

Useful links:

http://users.sedona.net/~strand/Nuristani/nuristanis.html

http://users.sedona.net/~strand/lngIndex0.html

Piotr

I get the impression that 'Dardic' and 'Nuristani', as well as the older, now politically-incorrect 'Kafiric' are approximate synonyms.

Nuristani seems to be the preferred modern term. This language group is usually said to stand with Iranian and Indic as an independent, first-level division of Indo-Iranian. Others suggest it is a highly conservative, isolated Indic dialect preserving some astounding archaisms.

The online Britannica article 'Dardic' is none to clear on this. It's as if the Dardic group is broken into two distinct units, one of which is Nuristani, with the remainder treated as Indic -- to include Kashmiri.

My geographic knowledge of this part of the world is still murky, but it seems the Dardic group is way up in the mountains, tucked into isolated valleys, just the kind of place where linguistic conservativeness occurs.

Mark.