Hijra Farsi

Hijra Farsi (Urdu: فارسی چانڈڑنہ) is a secret language spoken by South-Asian hijra and koti communities. Hijras are a marginalized transgender community that lives in sequestered groups in many cities of India and Pakistan. The language, also known as Koti Farsi, is spoken by the hijra community throughout Pakistan and North India (except West Bengal). The language is based on Hindustani and not Farsi, as suggested by the name.[1] The sentence structure is similar to Urdu, but noticeable distinctions exist.[2] Even though the language is not actually based on Farsi (Persian), the hijras consider the language to be related to the language of the Mughal Empire, which they associate with the origin of hijra identity. Hijra Farsi is most similar to Hindi, but is not intelligible to Hindi speakers due to distinctive intonation and a large amount of distinctive vocabulary.[1]

After the partition of India, the language has come to include words of local languages including Punjabi, Seraiki, Sindhi and other languages.

References

  1. 1 2 "Stanford Linguistics Colloquium". stanford.edu. Retrieved 16 February 2016.
  2. ↑ Sheeraz, Muhammad, and Ayaz Afsar. "Farsi: An Invisible But Loaded Weapon for the Emerging Hijraism in Pakistan." Kashmir Journal of Language Research 14, no. 2 (2011).

Further reading

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