Gawar-Bati Literature Corpus

Description

This corpus contains Gawarbati-language literature, including "Diwan Abu Fazl," a poetry collection (diwan) attributed to Abu Fazl, compiled to support language documentation, digital literacy development, and natural language processing research for Gawarbati. Gawarbati (also known as Gawar-Bati or Aranduyiwar) is an Indo-Aryan language of the Dardic subgroup spoken by an estimated 9,000 people, split between the Arandu area of lower Chitral in Pakistan (around 1,500 speakers) and across the border in Kunar Province, Afghanistan (around 7,500 speakers). It has received very limited linguistic study, with only a handful of academic sources documenting the language, and is rarely written making digitized text resources like this one especially valuable for preserving and studying the language before it becomes further endangered. When it is written, Gawarbati typically uses a modified Perso-Arabic script, extended with additional letters to represent sounds not found in standard Urdu or Persian, consistent with the pattern seen in other minority languages of the Chitral/Kunar region such as Palula, Dameli, and Wakhi.

Specifics

Licensing

Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0)

https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0.html

Gawarbati Literature Corpus

Overview

This corpus contains Gawarbati-language literature, centered on "Diwan Abu Fazl," a devotional poetry collection (diwan) by the poet Abu Fazl. It was compiled to support language documentation, digital literacy resource development, and natural language processing research for Gawarbati a severely under-resourced Dardic language of the Hindukush region.

Language

Gawarbati (also known as Gawar-Bati or Aranduyiwar) is an Indo-Aryan language of the Dardic subgroup, spoken by an estimated 9,000 people split across two countries: roughly 1,500 speakers around Arandu, the last village of lower Chitral, Pakistan, and roughly 7,500 speakers across the border in Kunar Province, Afghanistan.

Script

ا، ب، پ، ت، ٹ، ث، ج، چ، ح، خ، د، ڈ، ذ، ر، ڑ، ز، ژ، س، ش، ص، ض، ط، ظ، ع، غ، ف، ق، ک، گ، ل، م، ن، ں، و، ہ، ھ، ء، ی، ے۔

Data Structure

├──gwt.tar
├──gwt
└── diwan abu fazl gwt.txt

Authors

Abu Fazl (ابوالفضل)

Sample Text

The corpus includes devotional poetry (حَمد / hamd, in praise of God) and poems reflecting on pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, including one dated 1970 and another dated 2019 that references the COVID-19 pandemic (کورونا) disrupting Hajj and Umrah plans:

حَمد ڈل تہ تُو می تھنَئیس آں تو یادَمېم اے اللہ * تونی حُکُمےقائیم تھنہ جہان،تو پیانِمېم اےاللہ تُو رازق اؤ تُو مالِک تھنَئیس، رحمان تھنَئیس تُو کائیناتَنہ خالق اؤ ݫُوپَئیݪہ ڈڈل آسمان تھنَئیس تُو [...] ہانسِی ڈوک بی ابوالفضل بالِمېم اے اللہ * بے حسابے جنتی کېرہ انݪُوک آں کھائیمېم اے اللہ

مکہ اؤ مدینانہ ہرمانی دِمان بوئیک حاجاں مدینہ بی دِیَنہ بُوَہ خو * اَخ مونہ قِسمت لُݭُوَہ سومّی محروم بوئیک نہ ووڑون [...] تھِسنت مرض تہ بوئیت می رتیّ کورونا بی آیَہ * اخ مونہ تہ لو ݪُزُوَہ حج عمرہ بن بوئیت نہ ووڑون 2019