Since this summer, an ELA team has been working closely and consistently with a young Afghani refugee from the remote Nuristan region, which contains a group of languages that have long puzzled specialists as to their historical position within the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European. We have been working with her to map the sound system, basic vocabulary and core grammatical features of Ashkun, her language, which received only a cursory description by the eminent linguist Georg Morgenstierne almost 100 years ago. Our new collaborator is likely the only speaker of her language in New York and one of only a small number outside Afghanistan. It is only through your generosity that we are able to support such New Yorkers to carry out cultural work in a time and place that is increasingly prohibitive to devote oneself to cultural preservation.
Image from Edelberg, Lennart & Schuyler Jones. 1979. Nuristan. Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck. p.142