Language Snapshots

Kalasha (Pakistan) – Language Snapshot

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Abstract

Kalasha is an endangered Dardic language spoken by around 3,000-5,000 speakers in the remote valleys (Birir, Bumburet, Jinjiret, Rumbur, and Urtsun) of Chitral, Northern Pakistan. The Kalasha community is multilingual. In addition to Kalasha, the younger generation is fluent in several other languages of the area (Khowar, Kati, Pashto, and Urdu). The language is acquired by children and also taught at local schools in the valleys but there is ongoing language shift to Khowar and other neighboring languages (see Torwali, this volume). The community members are very active in the learning, teaching, and preservation of their language. It is used in day-to-day conversation, marriage and funeral ceremonies, and annual festivals. There are two main dialect clusters of Kalasha: Northern (spoken in Birir, Bumburet, and Rumbur valleys) and Southern (Jinjiret and Urtsun valleys). Recent years have seen an upsurge in the documentation of Kalasha, particularly from a purely linguistic perspective. The authors are involved in the phonetic and phonological documentation of Kalasha dialects spoken in Birir, Bumburet, and Rumbur valleys and developing tools for the automatic segmentation of the stories, narratives, and other spontaneous speech data.

Keywords: Kalasha, Dardic language, Endangered, Northern Pakistan

How to Cite:

Hussain, Q. & Mielke, J., (2020) “Kalasha (Pakistan) – Language Snapshot”, Language Documentation and Description 17, 66-75. doi: https://doi.org/10.25894/ldd97