• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• Notes on pronunciation
• Notes on the Vocabulary

Preface

This account of the Kechi dialect of Baluchi is designed to fill a gap in the literature available to English speakers whose work in the Sultanate of Oman brings them into contact with speakers of Baluchi. It is aimed at those seeking to learn sufficient of the language for everyday use. It includes a grammatical description, a set of phrases designed particularly for military use, and a vocabulary listing words both from Baluchi to English, and vice versa.

Those seeking a more authoritative and comprehensive account of the language are referred to "A Course in Baluchi" by Mohammed Abd-al-Rahman Barker and Aqil Khan Mengal, published in 1969 by McGill University, Montreal. This is the standard work on the subject, though it is based on the Rakhshani dialect, which differs, in some respects considerably, from the Kechi dialect mostly used in Oman.

This work is based upon the experience of twenty months service in the Oman with Baluch troops of the Western Frontier Regiment, supplemented by subsequent research in the United Kingdom. Some of the vocabulary and idiom are, in probability, peculiar to the Sultan's Forces, and the Baluchi represented here may be totally familiar neither to the specialist nor to the civilian inhabitant of Makran.

My grateful thanks are due to all those who assisted me in the preparation of this work; in particular to Lieutenant Colonel Peter Walton RAOC and Major William Foxton for their enthusiastic encouragement, to all the soldiers of D Company The Western Frontier Regiment, without whose help and perseverance this book would not have been possible, and especially to the following:

Naqib Zareen Noor Mohammed Shekh Baluch
Naqib Liyaqat Ali Kauda Luqman Kaudai Baluch
Raqib Wahid Bakhsh Taj Mohammed Baddani Brahui
Raqib Mohammed Ayub Mir Hayat Nausharwani Baluch
Jundy Mohammed Ali Mohammed Moosa Bajarzai Baluch
Naib Arif Imam Bakhsh Taj Mohammed Baluch Baluch
Arif Mohammed Yusuf Dawood Darzada Baluch
Raqib Ellahi Bakhsh Pasanvi Baluch
Naib Arif Abdul Hakim Mohammed Hashim Baluch

A special word of thanks is due to Professor J.H.Elfenbein, late of the University of Baluchistan in Quetta, for his enormous encouragement and patience and for the benefit his advice has been to this work.

Mistakes are, of course, the author's own.