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Balochi resources

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daristani
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6903 days ago

752 posts - 1661 votes 
Studies: Uzbek

 
 Message 1 of 3
19 May 2020 at 8:52pm | IP Logged 
This contribution will fall far short of the informative and comprehensive resource guides that Speakeasy has provided for so many languages, but I offer it anyway in the hope that it may be useful for people seeking materials to learn Balochi -- a language not much studied, and for which the relevant resources are found in some rather out-of-the way places.

Until fairly recently, just about the only resources for studying Balochi were older grammars and textbooks prepared by and for British administrators in the latter period of the Raj. These materials, from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, are now out of copyright, and thus are available in places like archive.org and in reprinted versions. I'll focus here on more modern materials.

The primary and most comprehensive resource for learners is:

Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman Barker and Aqil Khan Mengal -- A Course in Baluchi

Two volumes, 526 and 669 pages respectively, published by Institute of Islamic Studies of McGill University in Montreal, 1969. Audio was prepared for it, but I have no idea where it might be found today.

The books themselves are now fairly rare, but fortunately, the University has put them online for free download here: http://www.library.mcgill.ca/hostedjournals/002201021.html

More recently, a research effort at the University of Uppsala has produced a substantial quantity of instructional, reference, and reading materials which can be found on their website here: https://www.lingfil.uu.se/forskning/the-balochi-language-pro ject/

Note that the site offers a sort of textbook (look under "lessons") with accompanying audio, an online Balochi-English dictionary, A Grammar of Modern Standard Balochi, and PDF files of a number of reading selections, some with audio. (These materials employ a somewhat different Latin alphabet for Balochi than the Barker-Mengal book, but given the difficulty of finding Balochi materials, this would probably be only a minor obstacle for those interested in the language.)

A Balochi English Dictionary of over 30,000 Balochi words has just been published by Dr. Naseer Dashti, which is available on Amazon.com. (This dictionary is in the Balochi/Arabic script and alphabetical order, but also includes the Latin transcription of each headword.)

Several years ago, Dunwoody Press published a short Baluchi Glossary, which is only a very short Balochi-English vocabulary of 150 pages, by Mumtaz Ahmad, but also a much more substantial 296-page Balochi Reader by Dr. Abdul Razzaq Sabir, consisting of annotated reading selections, full English translations, and a glossary. Both of these readers employ the Arabic script.

In 1990, Otto Harrassowitz Publishers (Wiesbaden) published An Anthology of Classical and Modern Balochi Literature in two volumes, by Josef Elbenbein. Volume one, 465 pages, comprises a reader with Balochi texts and facing English translations, in various literary genres; the Balochi is all in Latin transcription. Volume two is a 167-page Balochi-English glossary, again in Latin script and alphabetic order.

Some other relatively recent publications that might be helpful, but are not easy to find, are:

Basic Balochi: An Introductory Course by Tim Farrell, published in Naples in 1990 by the Instituto Universitario Orientale, a short (90 pages) set of lessons on the Balochi dialect spoken in Karachi

A Grammar, Phrasebook and Vocabulary of the Baluchi Spoken in the Sultanate of Oman by N. A. Collett (second edition Abington, U.K.), 178 pages; a sketch-grammar, dialogues of largely military-related vocabulary, and glossary based on the speech of Baloch troops serving in the armed forces of the Sultanate

Parlons Baloutche, by Michel Malherbe and Naseebullah, a 125-page language and culture sketch published in the "Parlons" series

A Baluchi Miscellanea of Erotica and Poetry: Codex Oriental Additional 24048 of the British Library, by Josef Elbenbein. 160 pages, published in Naples in 1983, comprised of a number of classical Balochi folktales and poems (in Latin transcription) and facing English translations, followed by a Balochi-English glossary.   
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Speakeasy
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 3811 days ago

507 posts - 1097 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 2 of 3
21 May 2020 at 1:26am | IP Logged 
Crib Notes
Daristani, thank you for the compliment, however undeserved it may be. Messrs. Chung and reineke, not to mention many other HTLAL and LLORG members, have contributed far more than I ever have, but have not received the credit or recognition that they fully deserve. I never walked alongside these giants; rather, I followed them from a safe distance and jotted down a few crib notes on my shirt cuffs: steal from the best!

Additional Balochi Resources
Your list of resources is quite inspiring; a serious student of the language would benefit from working through even a small selection of the items that you presented. Below are a few additional items for consideration, some of which are rather dated. I apologize for the inadvertent duplication of titles in Daristani’s list above (failing eyesight).

Balochi Courses

DLI Headstart 2: Balochi
A familiarization course somewhat similar in scope to the DLI Headstart courses of the 1970s-1980s. The current generation places an emphasis on: (a) general communication skills in predictable situations drawn from daily life, and (b) mission-related communication skills. Level upon completion CEFR A0+++. A great place to start!

Balochi Supplemental Materials

DLI GLOSS: Balochi
Collection of graded exercise sets for supplemental practice (reading, aural, occasionally videos). Levels A0 to A2+. Free access.
          
NFLC (National Foreign Language Center Amharic) University of Maryland: Balochi
Collection of graded exercise sets for supplemental practice (reading, aural, occasionally videos) similar to the DLI GLOSS files. Levels A0 to A2+. Access contingent on payment of a $5.00 monthly subscription.

DLI Language Survival Kit: Balochi
Phrasebook-style survival communications for use in standardized situations. Downloadable PDF and MP3 files. Level upon completion CEFR A0.

Quran with Balochi Translation (2014) by Ibrahim Muhammad Al Madani

Balochi Readers

Balochi Reader by Dr. Abdul Abdul Razzaq (Dunwoody Press)
Balochi Reader by Dr. Abdul Abdul Razzaq (Dunwoody Press)
NOTE: Includes 6 audio CDs.

Balochi Tales Folklore History Series (circa 1920), by M. Longworth Dames
     
Languages on the Web: Baluchi
     
Balochi Dictionaries

Balochi / English Dictionary (2019), by Naseer Dashti
     
Balochi Glossary, by Mumtaz Ahmad
     
 English-Balochi Colloquial Dictionary: Volumes 1 & 2 (1925), by Major George Waters Gilbertson, Haddiani Ghano Khan

Белуџиски јазик

Balochi Grammars and Related Materials

Balochi Language, by World Heritage Encyclopedia
     
Language in Society: 8 Sociolinguistic Essays on Balochi (2000), Carina Jahani

Participant Reference in Three Balochi Dialects: Male & Female Narrations of Folktales & Biographical Tales (2017), by Maryam Nourzaei

Towards a Historical Grammar of Balochi: Studies in Balochi Historical Phonology and Vocabulary (2005), by Agnes Korn

Balochi Language of Turkmenistan: A Corpus-based Grammatical Description (2006), by Serge Axenov

Standardization Orthography in the Balochi Language (1989) by Carina Jahani

The Balochi Language: A Grammar and Manual (1923), by Major George Waters Gilbertson, Haddiani Ghano Khan

The Vowel Systems of Five Iranian Balochi Dialects (2012), by Farideh Okati

Balochi Culture, Society, History
Readers of this file would be prudent to bear in mind that some the resources below might portray the culture and history of the Baloch people from their unique perspective alone; that is, in direct opposition to that of the competing cultural / linguistic / ethnic groups in the region whose viewpoints are not as well-represented. No coin is so thin as not to have two sides. 
     
Pakistan: The Balochistan Conundrum (2010, by Tilak Devasher

Rájí Juhd u Zubán (2019), by Nágumán

The Baloch and Balochistan: A Historical Account from the Beginning to the Fall of the Baloch State (2012), by Naseer Dashti

The Baloch and Others: Linguistic, Historical and Socio-Political Perspectives on Pluralism in Balochistan (2nd ed., 2008), by Carina Jahani, Agnes Korn, and Paul Titus

The Baloch Conflict with Iran and Pakistan: Aspects of a National Liberation Struggle (2017), by Naseer Dashti

Gwaachin (2019), by Naseer Dashti

The Baloch and their Neighbours: Ethnic and Linguistic Contact in Balochistan in Historical and Modern Times (2003, 2013), by Gunilla Gren-Eklund et al.
     
Balochi: Miscellany
          
Balochi Linguist: Sources for Balochi

Balochi Linguist: Teaching materials of Balochi language

University of Chicago: Resources for the Study of Balochi

Wikipedia: Idioma baluchi

2 persons have voted this message useful



daristani
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6903 days ago

752 posts - 1661 votes 
Studies: Uzbek

 
 Message 3 of 3
08 September 2020 at 3:18pm | IP Logged 
A very comprehensive Balochi-Persian dictionary can be downloaded here:

volume one

volume two



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