A Nuristani elder in a pakol pointing out the mountainside to a small child at a timber window

Nuristani languages

The Nuristani languages

A branch of the Indo-Iranian family found only in these valleys: where each language is spoken, what makes them old, and the voices we are recording.

The family

One family, three branches

The languages of Nuristan sit in a box of their own. They are Indo-Iranian, related to Persian, Pashto and Hindi, but they are neither Iranian nor Indo-Aryan. They make up a third branch of the family, spoken by a couple of hundred thousand people at most, in the valleys of Nuristan and a few villages over the border in Chitral, and hardly anywhere else.

The Norwegian linguist Georg Morgenstierne, who worked in the region from the 1920s, showed that they split from the common stock before Iranian and Indo-Aryan went their separate ways. The evidence is in the sounds: ancient consonants that became one thing in Iranian and another in Indo-Aryan survive here in a third, older form. Kati duts for ten, beside Sanskrit daśa and Avestan dasa, is the textbook case.

Indo-Iranian family

Iranian

NuristaniIts own branch

Indo-Aryan

Five living languages

Kamkata-viri

Kamdesh & the east

Waygali-ala

Waygal valley

Ashkun

South-western valleys

Tregami

Tregam valley, lower Pech

Prasun

Parun valley

Five is the count usually given, but it understates the variety. From valley to valley the speech shifts: sometimes into a distinct tongue, sometimes only an accent, and often so different that people from neighbouring valleys cannot understand one another. Kamkata-viri alone spans Kata-vari, Kamviri and Mumviri. Cut off from each other by the mountains for generations, every valley grew its own words and customs.

Family: Indo-Iranian, a branch of its own
Languages: Five, or six on some counts
Speakers: A couple of hundred thousand at most
Largest: Kamkata-viri
Most distinct: Prasun
Script: None in daily use
Also spoken: A few villages in Chitral
Status: All five on UNESCO's endangered list

Valley by valley

The five languages

Each has its own valleys, its own name for itself and its own history. A Nuristani from one valley usually cannot understand the language of another, so people from different valleys talk to each other in Pashto or Dari, the official languages of Afghanistan, which Nuristanis speak fluently. Speaker numbers are estimates; nobody has counted properly.

Kata-vari, Kamviri, Mumviri

Kamkata-viri (Kati)

Also called Bashgali

Where: The Bashgal valley and its side valleys in the east, the Kantiwa valley, the Ramgal and Kulam valleys in the far west, and a few villages of Chitral in Pakistan.
Speakers: The largest of the five, by a wide margin.

Its speakers name it by tribe: Kata-vari for the Kata, Kamviri for the Kom of Kamdesh, Mumviri for the Mumo. Some scholars count Kati and Kamviri as separate languages, which is why the family is sometimes said to have six members.

Western Kati, spoken in Ramgal and Kulam, sounds noticeably different from the eastern Kati of the Bashgal.

Kamdesh Bargi Matal Mandol Kantiwa

The full Kati guide

Recording to come. We are gathering voices from the valley.

Waygali

Waygali-ala (Waigali)

Also called Kalasha-ala, Nuristani Kalasha, Wai-ala

Where: The Waygal valley in the south, in villages such as Waygal, Nishigram, Ameshdesh and Want.
Speakers: Somewhere between ten and twenty thousand, on the usual estimates.

In Waygal people call their language Waygali-ala, or simply Waygali: ala means in the language. Kalasha-ala is the name in the books, built the same way on Kalasha, the word the Kalash of Chitral use for themselves. People in Waygal know their speech is kin to theirs. The two peoples share an old name and, until the 1890s, related religions, but the Kalash of Chitral speak an Indo-Aryan language, so the two are cousins rather than siblings.

Zemiaki, spoken by four or five hundred people at Zamia in the Chapa Dara valley of Kunar, whose families left Nishigram centuries ago, is usually grouped with Kalasha-ala.

The Kalasha spoken in the Kalash valleys of Chitral is a different language. Read about the Kalasha language of Chitral.

Waygal Want

The full Waigali guide

Recording to come. We are gathering voices from the valley.

Ashkunu

Ashkun

Also called Ashkunu, Sanu-viri

Where: The central Pech valley around Wama, and the side valleys on the eastern flank of the Alingar in Nurgaram and Du Ab.
Speakers: Something like forty thousand on the higher estimates, second only to Kamkata-viri.

Three peoples speak it: the Ashkunu of the Alingar-side valleys, the Sanu of Wama and the Gramsana of Achanu. No native name covers all three; Ashkun is the Kati name for the first. The language has sound changes of its own that set it apart from the languages of the east.

Wama Nurgaram Du Ab

The full Ashkun guide

Recording to come. We are gathering voices from the valley.

Tregami

Also called Gambiri

Where: Three villages, Gambir, Katar and Devoz, in the Tregam valley off the lower Pech. The valley is in Watapur district of Kunar, just outside the provincial line.
Speakers: A few thousand. The smallest of the five.

Closest to Kalasha-ala, with which it shares three quarters or more of its vocabulary. A reminder that the map of the languages and the map of the province do not quite match.

The Tregam valley, in Kunar Waygal, its nearest Nuristani neighbour

The full Tregami guide

Recording to come. We are gathering voices from the valley.

Vasi-vari, Vasi-veri

Prasun

Also called Paruni, Veron, Wasi-weri

Where: The Parun valley, the seat of the provincial capital, in six villages along about twenty kilometres of river.
Speakers: Perhaps eight thousand.

The most distinct of the five by a distance. Old sounds shifted here in ways they did not anywhere else, so that a Kati speaker from the next valley cannot follow it, and early scholars wondered whether it belonged to the family at all.

UNESCO lists Prasun as definitely endangered. It has three dialect areas along a single valley.

Parun

The full Prasun guide

Recording to come. We are gathering voices from the valley.

On the map

Where each language is spoken

One colour per district shows its main language. The real picture is finer than that, as the next section explains, and Tregami's three villages lie in the Tregam valley of Kunar, just off the southern edge of the map.

Badakhshan Panjshir Laghman Kunar Chitral, Pakistan20 kmN

Kamkata-viri
Waygali-ala
Ashkun
Prasun

Tap a district to open its guide. Boundaries via geoBoundaries, with our own lines for Kantiwa and Want, which have no official ones yet; rivers from OpenStreetMap. The language areas are simplified to district level.

The honest count

Five languages, or fifty?

Five is the tidy answer, and it undercounts the reality. Every one of these languages splits from valley to valley into distinct tongues or at least distinct accents, and people from different valleys usually cannot understand each other's speech. When they meet, they talk in Pashto or Dari. Generations of isolation behind high passes gave each valley its own words and customs, and most of that speech has never been written down.

When people from Nuristan say the province has five languages, they mean five families of speech, not five uniform tongues.

The evidence

What makes them old

Consonants the rest of Indo-Iranian lost. The dental affricate in words like duts, ten, is the branch's fingerprint.
Counting in twenties. Forty is two twenties and sixty is three, a habit shared with the Dardic languages next door and with Basque and old Celtic far away, and older than the decimal counting of Persian.
Retroflex consonants, made with the tongue curled back, which Persian lacks entirely.
Words that reach back to the common Indo-Iranian past. The names of the old gods, Imra and Indr among them, share roots with the Vedic hymns of ancient India.

Today

Speaking, writing, surviving

These are spoken languages. There is no standard script and no tradition of literature on paper; the literature is oral, in songs, proverbs and the stories told on winter evenings. People who write their own language do so in the Arabic-based alphabet they learnt for Pashto and Dari, spelling by ear. The American linguist Richard Strand, who has documented the languages since the late 1960s, devised writing systems for Kamviri and others, but they have not entered daily use. Afghanistan's 2004 constitution listed Nuristani among the languages with official status in the areas where they are spoken, alongside Pashai, Pamiri, Balochi, Uzbek and Turkmen, though in practice schooling and administration run in Pashto and Dari.

Nuristanis speak Pashto and Dari fluently as well, and many speak Urdu too. That is a strength and a risk. In the lower valleys, closer to the road and the plains, Pashto is gaining ground. In the high villages the languages are secure for now because there is no one else to talk to. Keeping them alive as the roads arrive means recording them while the elders who speak them best are still here, and giving children a reason to be proud of a speech that only their valley understands.

Recordings

Help us record them

We are gathering recordings from the valleys: a greeting, a proverb, a few lines of a song, counted numbers, in each language and as many dialects as we can reach. If you or your family speak a Nuristani language, record a minute on your phone, tell us who is speaking and where they are from, and send it to us. We will credit every voice and publish the recordings here.

Send a recording

Questions

Asked about the Nuristani languages

What language do Nuristanis speak?

One of the five Nuristani languages, depending on the valley: Kamkata-viri (Kati), Waygali-ala (Kalasha-ala in the books), Ashkun, Tregami or Prasun, and Pashto and Dari as well, the official languages of the Afghan state, which Nuristanis speak fluently. People from different valleys usually cannot understand each other's Nuristani, so they talk to each other in Pashto or Dari. The Nuristani languages form their own branch of the Indo-Iranian family, separate from both.

How many Nuristani languages are there?

Five are usually counted. Some scholars separate Kati and Kamviri and count six. Each language splits further into valley dialects, and people from different valleys usually cannot understand each other's speech.

Is Nuristani a dialect of Pashto or Persian?

No. Pashto and Persian are Iranian languages. The Nuristani languages are a third branch of Indo-Iranian that split from the common ancestor before Iranian and Indo-Aryan parted. Nuristanis also speak Pashto and Dari fluently and use them to talk to people from other valleys, which is where the confusion comes from.

Is Nuristani Indo-Aryan or Dardic?

Most linguists today treat Nuristani as neither Indo-Aryan nor Dardic, but as a third branch of Indo-Iranian beside Iranian and Indo-Aryan. That view goes back to Georg Morgenstierne, who showed in the mid-twentieth century that the languages keep old sounds the other two branches changed. Other sources differ: the languages were once grouped with the Dardic languages of their neighbours, and Britannica still places them inside Indo-Aryan. Richard Strand, who has documented them since the late 1960s, argues that the many words and features they later borrowed from Indo-Aryan are what led some linguists to class them as Indo-Aryan. Dardic itself is now seen as a geographical name for Indo-Aryan languages of the north-western mountains, such as Khowar and the Kalasha of Chitral, rather than a family of its own.

Are the Nuristani languages written?

Not in daily life, and only recently at all. There is no standard script and the literature is oral. An alphabet in the Arabic script, the Alifba-yi Nuristani published by the Afghan Academy of Sciences in 1987 and used for a time by Kati writers in Kabul, has largely been forgotten, and the writing systems devised by linguists have not entered common use. People who write their language adapt the spelling they learnt for Pashto or Dari. Two large dictionaries printed in Kabul are now setting examples others follow: Sulayman Sun-Aro's of Kati in 2016, and Samiullah Taza's of Waygali-ala in 2017.

Are the Nuristani languages endangered?

All five are in UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (2010). Kamkata-viri, Ashkun, Waygali-ala and Prasun are rated definitely endangered, and Tregami, spoken in three villages in Kunar, severely endangered. Children in the high villages still learn them at home, but Pashto is gaining in the lower valleys, in schools and in the bazaars.

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Sources

Where this comes from

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