Kalasha (Bumburet variety)

TLDR

Kalasha (kls) is a Northwestern Indo‑Aryan language spoken by 3,000–5,000 people in the Bumburet valley of Chitral, Pakistan, classified as vigorous yet threatened, and heavily influenced by Khowar and other neighboring languages through extensive loanwords. The language’s orthography transitioned from Arabic script to a Latin-based script in 2000 to facilitate written communication.

Abstract

Kalasha (ISO 639-3: kls), also known as Kalashamon, is a Northwestern Indo-Aryan language spoken in Chitral District of Khyber Pakhtunkwa Province in northern Pakistan, primarily in the valleys of Bumburet, Rumbur, Urtsun, and Birir, as shown in Figure 1. The number of speakers is estimated between 3000 and 5000. The Ethnologue classifies the language status as ‘vigorous’ (Eberhard, Simons & Fennig 2019) but some researchers consider it ‘threatened’ (Rahman 2006, Khan & Mela-Athanasopoulou 2011). Kalasha has been in close contact with Nuristani and other Northwestern Indo-Aryan languages. Among the latter, the influence of Khowar has been particularly strong because it functions as a lingua franca of Chitral District (Liljegren & Khan 2017). The Kalasha lexicon includes many loanwords from Khowar, as well as from Persian, Arabic, and Urdu (Trail & Cooper 1999). Early efforts to put the language in writing employed Arabic script but a Latin-based script was adopted in 2000 (Cooper 2005, Kalash & Heegård 2016).