IRSE Green Book No.29 Solid State Interlocking 1988 by Institution of Railway Signal Engineers (IRSE)

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1 Agricultural and economic factors Geographically, Baltistan is a spectacular region of immense rugged mountains, glaciers, icy rivers, and deep valleys. Most of the land is either too high, too steep, or too rocky to offer much agricultural potential. The Skardu Valley, though wide and long, is mostly barren sand dunes and a flood plain for the Indus River. These physical constraints, combined with the general dryness of the climate, have tended to limit the agricultural productivity of the land, and therefore its population.

For example, where most of the Balti locations are now using the velar nasal [K] intervocalicly, Kharmang and Skardu Purki have usually maintained the bilabial nasal [m] of the literary Tibetan forms. It is likely that this phonological shift is still in process in various parts of Baltistan, which may account for the fact that some of the locations are not entirely consistent in their use of either [m] or [K]. See the examples in (9) below. 17 The man who gave the original Shigar word list consistently used the voiceless alveolar nasal [n0] in word initial position where other people used the sequence [sn] or [xn].

All of the questionnaire respondents stated that they thought Urdu was an easy language to speak. Most people considered Urdu to be better than their own language for literature, because of the greater opportunities for advancement and learning which it provides, and because it is a much more widely used language. 1 Attitudes toward language shift or change Although Balti is probably still spoken in much the same way as it has been for hundreds of years, and seems to have been less affected by Urdu and other neighboring tongues than most Pakistani languages, some changes are occurring.