Khowar is classified as a Dardic Language. It is spoken by 400,000 people in Chitral in Northwest Pakistan, in Yasin and Gupis in neighboring Gilgit, and in parts of Upper Swat. It is spoken as a second language in the rest of Gilgit and Hunza. There are believed to be a small number of Khowar speakers in Afghanistan, China, India, Tajikistan and Istanbul. The Dardic languages form a subfamily of the Indo-Iranian languages. ... Chitral, or Chitrāl, is the name of a town (35° 53 N; 71° 48 E), valley, river, district, and former princely state in the Malakand Division of the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. ... North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) is geographically the smallest of the four provinces of Pakistan. ... Gilgit is a region in the Northern Areas of Pakistan, bordering the Chinese region of Xinjiang. ... Swat is presently a district, but historically a Muslim princely state, in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. ... Gilgit is a region in the Northern Areas of Pakistan, bordering the Chinese region of Xinjiang. ... Hunza is the northernmost part of a region known as the Northern Areas of Pakistan. ... Shows the Location of the Province İstanbul Istanbul (Turkish: İstanbul; contraction of the citys previous Greek name Constantinople) is the largest city in Turkey, and arguably the most important. ...

Khowar is clearly an Indo-European Language, as demonstrated by the following: The Indo-European languages include some 443 (SIL estimate) languages and dialects spoken by about three billion people, including most of the major language families of Europe and western Asia, which belong to a single superfamily. ...

I am = asum You are = asus He/She is = asur We Are = asumi You Are = asusi They are = asuni

It is believed that Khowar is an old language spoken by the original Aryan Invaders more than 4,000 years ago, who made a wrong left turn at Jalalabad, ascended the Kunar River and got stuck high in the Hindu Kush mountains of Chitral. Aryan is an English word derived from the Indian Vedic Sanskrit and Iranian Avestan terms ari-, arya-, ārya-, and/or the extended form aryāna-. The Old Persian ariya- is a cognate as well. ... Jalalabad (Persian: Jalālābād) is the capital of Nangarhar province in Afghanistan, 150 km east of Kabul near the Khyber Pass. ... The Hindu Kush or Hindukush (هندوکش in Persian) is a mountain range in Afghanistan as well as in the Northern Areas of Pakistan. ... Chitral is a district in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan that contains the town of Chitral. ...

The Norwegian Linguist Georg Morgenstierne wrote that Chitral is the area of the greatest linguistic diversity in the world. Although Khowar is the predominant language of Chitral, more than ten other languages are spoken here. These include Kalasha, Phalura, Dameli, Gawar-Bati, Nuristani, Yidgha, Burushaski, Gujar, Wakhi, Kyrgyz, Farsi and Pashto. Since many of these languages have no written form, letters are usually written in Urdu or Farsi. The following is a list of linguists, those who study linguistics. ... Chitral, or Chitrāl, is the name of a town (35° 53 N; 71° 48 E), valley, river, district, and former princely state in the Malakand Division of the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. ... A Kalasha girl in everyday traditional dress The Kalasha, also known as the Kalash an ethnic group that lives in the Hindu Kush region of Pakistan, are an ancient Dardic people. ... Phalura, also known as Palola and as Ashretiwar, is spoken by 7,000 to 15,000 people in Ashret and Biori Valleys, in the Chitral District of the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. ... Dameli is a language spoken by less than 5,000 people in the remote valley of Damil-Nisar, in the Chitral District of the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. ... Gawar-Bati is known in Chitral as Aranduyiwar, because it is spoken in Village Arandu, which is the last village in the bottom of Chitral and is across the Kunar River from Berkot in Afghanistan. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Yidgha is a Pamir Language spoken in the Upper Lutkuh Valley of Chitral, west of Garam Chishma in Pakistan. ... Burushaski (Other names are Burushaski, Brushas, Brushias) is a language isolate spoken by some 50,000_60,000 people in the Hunza, Nagir, Yasin, and some parts of Gilgit valleys in northern Pakistan. ... Migrants in one of the several migratory waves that brought Indo-Europeans into South-Asia. ... The Wakhi Tajiki language is an Iranian language in the subbranch of Southeastern Iranian languages (see Pamir languages). ... Kyrgyz language edition of Wikipedia Kyrgyz, also Kirghiz (Кыргыз тили), is a Northwestern Turkic language, and, together with Russian, an official language of Kyrgyzstan. ... Farsi may refer to: Persian: Farsi is the native name for the Persian language spoken in Iran (Persia), Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and some other parts of the Caucasus and Central Asia (Ossetians speak Ossetic, which is a branch of Persian). ... Pashto (پښتو; also known as Afghan, Pushto, Pashto, Pashtoe, Pashtu, and Pukhto) is the language spoken by the ethnic Afghan otherwise known as the Pashtun people who inhabit Afghanistan and the Western provinces of Pakistan. ... Urdu(اردو) is an Indo-European language which originated in India, most likely in the vicinity of Delhi, from whence it spread to the rest of the subcontinent. ... Farsi may refer to: Persian: Farsi is the native name for the Persian language spoken in Iran (Persia), Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and some other parts of the Caucasus and Central Asia (Ossetians speak Ossetic, which is a branch of Persian). ...

Books

• Khowar English Dictionary (by Mohammad Ismail Sloan, 1981) (published in Pakistan)

• Decker, Kendall D. (1992) Languages of Chitral http://www.ethnologue.com/show_work.asp?id=32850

• Morgenstierne, Georg (1926) Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan. Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, Serie C I-2. Oslo.

Samuel H. Sloan (b. ...

External Links

• Khowar Word List

• Khowar Dictionary

• Dardic Languages of Chitral

• Kalasha Word List

• Nuristan: Hidden Land of the Hindu Kush

• Khowar, A Language of Pakistan