Jayakar (Atmaram Sadasiva Grandin Jayakar)
Jayakar recorded the first linguistic data of Kumzari in 1902. In his article on the Shahee (Shihuh) dialect of Arabic, he added an appendix on the Kumzari language. In this brief six-page appendix, Jayakar noted details about the authenticity of the Kumzari people and some phonological and grammatical features of the Kumzari language, demonstrating its Iranian origin. This appendix also included an English-to-Kumzari lexicon containing 120 words and four Kumzari sentences. Around the same time, Cox and Trevor collected brief information on Kumzari, which included a translation of a parable from the Bible and a short lexicon. This work was never published, but it reached linguists such as Grierson, Morgenstierne, and eventually Skjærvø. Morgenstierne and Skjærvø utilized Cox and Trevor’s data in their research.
Thomas (Bertram Thomas)
Bertram Thomas wrote a detailed article in 1931 entitled “The Kumzari Dialect of the Shihuh Tribe.” This article drew the attention of many researchers and linguists to Kumzari. Thomas, though not a linguist by profession, begins his article with the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Kumzari. The majority of this article is comprised of a lexicon with approximately 550 entries. Although the valuable information in this article continues to be used by researchers to this day, Thomas’s analyses and sometimes his translations are replete with errors. These mistakes have subsequently found their way into the works of researchers following Thomas.
Skjærvø (Prods Oktor Skjærvø)
Skjærvø wrote an article in 1989 in the “Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum” edited by Rüdiger Schmitt, entitled “Languages of Southeast Iran: Larestani, Kumzari, Bashkardi.” He was the first proper “linguist” to undertake a “detailed” examination of Kumzari. Skjærvø had before him the data that had been collected in the first half of the twentieth century by Jayakar, Cox and Trevor, and Thomas, and based on that material he proceeded to analyze the Kumzari language. In this article, Skjærvø presented a clearer picture of the Kumzari language, but since he himself had not conducted fieldwork on the Kumzari language, some errors from the primary sources also found their way into his article.
