Native to Afghanistan Native speakers 400,000 (2000–2011) | Ethnicity Pashayi people Glottolog pash1270 | |
Language family Indo-EuropeanIndo-IranianIndo-AryanDardicPashayi ISO 639-3 Variously:aee – Northeasternglh – Northwesternpsi – Southeasternpsh – Southwestern | ||
Pashayi or Pashai (sometimes referred to colloquially in neighbouring languages as "Shari") is a group of languages spoken by the Pashai people in parts of Kapisa, Laghman, Nuristan, Kunar, and Nangarhar Provinces in Northeastern Afghanistan. It belongs to the Dardic branch of the Indo-Aryan languages. Most speakers are bilingual in Pashto with a literacy rate of about 25%, with the Pashayi languages having no written form prior to 2003. There are four mutually unintelligible varieties, with only about a 30% lexical similarity:
A grammar of the language was written as a doctoral dissertation in 2014.
References
Pashayi languages Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA