| The
lexical item namaska:r refers to the traditional
echo-greeting and is usally, but not always, accompanied by bringing one's
hands together pressed in front of one's chest as in the following illustration.
There is always a tendency to slightly bow one's head.
There are several lexical
items very frequently used in Kashmiri which are essentially markers of
the honorific scale. Such lexical items mark participant relationships
in terms of religion, politeness, degree of respect, age, etc. Consider,
among others, the following situations:
ji:
is an honorific suffix used for friends, elders, or acquaintances, mostly
by Hindu speakers of Kashmiri. The semantic range of ji:
in Kashmiri is roughly the same as that in Hindi or Hindustani. The use
of proper names such as 
may be termed the Hindi-ization of Kashmiri proper names, such as, 
.
is used in those contexts in which regard is shown. The semantic range
of
is not identical to that of ji:. The difference
is that
does not follow proper names, family names, etc., as does ji:.
mahra:
(Hindi, mahra:j) has more or less the same
distribution as the English sir. Generally, it is only used by Kashmiri
Pandits, and, on the hierarchy of the honorific scale, it ranks higher
than
.
haz
(Persian, hazrat) has the same distribution
as mahra:. Note, however, that the
use of mahra: is restricted to the Kashmiri
Pandit speakers, and
haz to Kashmiri Muslims.
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