Khowar

Khowar is classified as a Dardic Language. It is spoken by 400,000 people in Chitral in Northwest Pakistan, in Yasin Valley 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.

Khowar is clearly an Indo-European Language, as demonstrated by the following:

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.

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, Persian and Pashto. Since many of these languages have no written form, letters are usually written in Urdu or Persian.