Balti
Sign in to saveAlso known as Balti language
Tibetan language spoken in Baltistan, in Gilgit–Baltistan of Pakistan and adjoining parts of Ladakh
Key facts
- Native to
- Pakistan , India
- Region
- Baltistan , Ladakh
- Ethnicity
- Balti
- Native speakers
- 425,000 in Pakistan (2018) Total users in all countries: 438,800 (2018)
- Language family
- Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Tibeto-Kanauri (?) Bodish Tibetic Ladakhi–Balti Balti
- Writing system
- Perso-Arabic script (current) Tibetan script (current) Balti (Historical)
- Iso 639 3
- bft
- Glottolog
- balt1258
- Elp
- Balti
via Wikipedia infobox
~12 min read
Encyclopedic overview
This is a video example of Balti being spoken by Rizwan, a speaker of Balti
Balti (Perso-Arabic script: بلتی, Tibetan: སྦལ་ཏི།, Wylie: sbal ti) is a Tibetic language natively spoken by the ethnic Balti people in the Baltistan region of Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, Nubra Valley of the Leh district and the Kargil district of Ladakh, India. The language differs from Standard Tibetan; many sounds of Old Tibetan that were lost in Standard Tibetan are retained in the Balti language. It also has a simple pitch accent system only in multi-syllabic words while Standard Tibetan has a complex and distinct pitch system that includes tone contour. Due to effects of dominant languages in Pakistani media like Urdu, Punjabi and English and religious impact of Arabic and Persian languages, Balti, like other regional languages of Pakistan, is continuously expanding its vocabulary base with loanwords.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Balti” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.