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

Nuristani languages

Five languages that belong to no one else

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

Kalasha-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 a few so different that neighbours can barely follow 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: Prasun listed as endangered

Valley by valley

The five languages

Each has its own valleys, its own name for itself and its own history. Speaker numbers are estimates; nobody has counted properly.

Kata-vari, Kamviri, Mumviri

Kamkata-viri

Also called Kati, 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

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

Kalasha-ala

Also called Waigali, 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.

The name means the speech of the Kalasha, which is also what the Kalash of Chitral call themselves. 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 a few hundred people, is usually grouped with Kalasha-ala.

Waygal

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.

The Ashkun call themselves Sanu. Their language has sound changes of its own that set it apart from the languages of the east.

Wama Nurgaram Du Ab

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.

Waygal, its nearest Nuristani neighbour

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

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

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 some of the differences are large enough that neighbours barely understand each other. 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.

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

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