Khowar
Indo-Aryan language of Pakistan
title: "Khowar" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["khowar-language", "dardic-languages", "languages-of-lower-chitral-district", "languages-of-upper-chitral-district", "languages-of-pakistan", "languages-of-gilgit-baltistan"] description: "Indo-Aryan language of Pakistan" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khowar" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Indo-Aryan language of Pakistan ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox language"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Khowar |
| nativename | {{nq |
| {{nq | کھوار}} |
| states | Pakistan |
| region | Chitral |
| ethnicity | Kho people (Chitralis) |
| speakers | |
| date | 2020 |
| ref | e26 |
| familycolor | Indo-European |
| fam2 | Indo-Iranian |
| fam3 | Indo-Aryan |
| fam4 | Dardic |
| fam5 | Chitrali |
| script | Perso-Arabic script (Khowar alphabet) |
| iso3 | khw |
| glotto | khow1242 |
| glottorefname | Khowar |
| lingua | 59-AAB-aa |
| image | File:Khowar in Nastaliq.svg |
| imagecaption | Khowar written in the Khowar alphabet in Nastaliq style. |
| map | Khowar location.svg |
| mapcaption | Map showing the distribution of the Khowar language |
| agency | Association for the Promotion of Khowar |
| :: |
| name = Khowar | altname = | nativename = {{nq|کھووار}} {{nq|کھوار}} | states = Pakistan | region = Chitral | ethnicity = Kho people (Chitralis) | speakers = | date = 2020 | ref = e26 | familycolor = Indo-European | fam2 = Indo-Iranian | fam3 = Indo-Aryan | fam4 = Dardic | fam5 = Chitrali | script = Perso-Arabic script (Khowar alphabet) | nation = | iso3 = khw | glotto = khow1242 | glottorefname = Khowar | lingua = 59-AAB-aa | image = File:Khowar in Nastaliq.svg | pronunciation = | imagecaption = Khowar written in the Khowar alphabet in Nastaliq style. | map = Khowar location.svg | mapcaption = Map showing the distribution of the Khowar language | agency = Association for the Promotion of Khowar Khowar ({{nq|کھووار}}, Khōwār, ), also known by its common exonym Chitrali, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Dardic group, primarily spoken by the Kho people (Chitralis), native to the Chitral region and surrounding areas of Pakistan.
Khowar is the lingua franca of Chitral, and it is also spoken in the Gupis-Yasin and Ghizer districts of Gilgit-Baltistan, as well as in the Upper Swat district.
Speakers of Khowar have also migrated heavily to Pakistan's major urban centres, with Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar having significant populations. It is also spoken as a second language by the Kalash people.
Names
The native name of the language is Khō-wār, meaning "language (wār) of the Kho people". During the British Raj, it was known to the English as Chitrālī (a derived adjective from the name of the Chitral region) or Qāshqārī. Among the Pashtuns and Badakhshanis, it is known as Kashkār. Another name, used by Leitner in 1880, is Arnyiá or Arniya, derived from the Shina language name for the part of the Yasin (a valley in Gilgit-Baltistan) where Khowar is spoken.
History
The Khowar language expanded throughout Chitral from the northern part of the region, specifically from the Mulkhow and Torkhow Valley. According to Morgenstierne, the original abode of the Khowar language was northern Chitral in the valleys around Mastuj. The Khowar language started expanding into southern Chitral around the early 14th century.
Khowar shares a great number of morphological characteristics with neighbouring Iranian languages of Badakhshan, pointing to a very early location of proto-Khowar in its original abode in Upper Chitral, although from its links with the Gandhari language, it likely came from further south in the first millennium BC, possibly through Swat and Dir**.**
Georg Morgenstierne noted, "Khowar, in many respects [is] the most archaic of all modern Indian languages, retaining a great part of Sanskrit case inflexion, and retaining many words in a nearly Sanskritic form".
Phonology
Khowar has a variety of dialects, which may vary phonemically. The following tables lay out the basic phonology of Khowar.{{Citation |last = Bashir |first = Elena L. |author-link = Elena Bashir |title = Topics in Kalasha Syntax: An areal and typological perspective |journal = Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan |year = 1988 |url = http://salc.uchicago.edu/sites/salc.uchicago.edu/files/bashirdissertation.pdf |pages = 37–40 |access-date = 7 May 2014 |archive-date = 4 March 2016 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160304120345/http://salc.uchicago.edu/sites/salc.uchicago.edu/files/bashirdissertation.pdf |url-status = dead |last1= Bashir |first= Elena L.|author1-link=Elena Bashir |last2=Nigah|first2=Maula |last3=Baig|first3=Rahmat Karim |title= A Digital Khowar-English Dictionary with Audio |year= 2004|url= https://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/khowar/
Vowels
::data[format=table]
| Front | Central | Back | Close | Mid | Open |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| :: |
Khowar may also have nasalized vowels and a series of long vowels , , , , and . Sources are inconsistent on whether length is phonemic, with one author stating "vowel-length is observed mainly as a substitute one. The vowel-length of phonological value is noted far more rarely." Unlike the neighboring and related Kalasha language, Khowar does not have retroflex vowels.
Consonants
::data[format=table] | Labial | Coronal | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Post- velar | Glottal | Nasal | Stop | voiceless | voiced | aspirated | Affricate | voiceless | voiced | aspirated | Fricative | voiceless | voiced | Approximant | Rhotic | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | () | | | () | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ::
Allophones of are heard as sounds . /q x ɣ ʑ f/ are restricted to Perso-Arabic loanwords in most IA languages but they occur natively in Khowar, e.g. Sanskrit mukha, yūkā, yákan, bhrāturjāyā; Khowar mux, žuġ, ṣéġun, brežáyu. The original Old Indo-Aryan /s, ʂ, ɕ/ contrast is maintained, eg. OIA. joṣati, aśru, svásṛ; Kh. ǰoṣík, aśrú, ispusár. The OIA kṣ became c̣/c̣h eg. OIA. pakṣa, Kh. poc̣ and more sibilants were made instead of a reduction which Continental IA did, eg. OIA. gaḍa, Kh. goẓ. OIA cluster ts was either preserved as a single phoneme ċ/ċh or merged with some other consonant OIA. vatsa, matsya, uts Kh. bac̣hóɫ, maċhí, uċ.
Tone
Khowar, like many Dardic languages, has either phonemic tone or stress distinctions.{{Citation |last= Baart |first= Joan L. G. |title= Tonal features in languages of northern Pakistan |year= 2003 |publisher=National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University and Summer Institute of Linguistics |url=http://www.fli-online.org/documents/linguistics/tone_in_np.pdf | pages= 3, 6
Orthography
Main article: Khowar alphabet
Khowar orthography is derived from Urdu alphabet, with additional letters created to represent sounds unique to Khowar. Similar to Urdu, Khowar is typically written in the calligraphic Nastaʿlīq script.
From the end of the 19th century onwards, literaturists and rulers of Chitral princely state have put in much effort to popularize literacy, reading, and writing in Khowar. Initially, Mirza Muhammad Shakur and Prince Tajumal Shah Mohfi adopted Persian alphabet, used in neighbouring Afghanistan. However, Persian alphabet did not have letters for many unique sounds in Khowar. By the early 20th century, as under British Colonial rule, Urdu education and literacy became ever more popular among Indian Muslims (see Hindi–Urdu controversy), Chitrali literaturists, namely Sir Nasir ul-Mulk and Mirza Muhammad Ghafran saw Urdu script as a better fit for Khowar. Nonetheless, Urdu also lacked sounds that existed in Chitrali. Thus, new letters were proposed and created. But the process of settling on a standard Khowar script continued for decades into the 1970s. This process was not without controversy either. Some literaturists were advocating for keeping the number of letters to a minimum, or in other words removing Arabic letters that do not represent distinct sounds in Khowar and are homophone with other letters (for example , being homophone with respectively). In total, 6 new letters were added to the 37-letter Urdu Alphabet, to create the 43-letter Khowar script.
Grammar
Nouns
Khowar nouns inflect based on animacy, number, and case.
Animacy
The three gender system from Old Indo-Aryan has been replaced with an animacy-based noun classification system in Khowar.
Number
The direct case plural is usually marked only on animate nouns.
Case
All Khowar nouns have four case forms, direct, oblique, ablative, and vocative. Inanimate nouns additionally have forms for instrumental, and four different locative cases. The locative 1 expresses pointlike locations as opposed to those having linear extent. The locative 2 expresses horizontal motion or location. The locative 3 expresses upward motion or location, while the locative 4 expresses downward motion or location.
::{| class="wikitable" |+ Case endings ! rowspan="2" | Case ! colspan="2" | Singular ! colspan="2" | Plural |- ! animate || inanimate ! animate || inanimate |- ! direct | Ø, or -án | Ø | -án, -gíni, or reduplication
| Ø, (-án) |
|---|
| ! oblique |
| -o |
| -o |
| -an |
| -an |
| - |
| ! locative 1 |
| rowspan=5 |
| -a |
| rowspan=5 |
| -en |
| - |
| ! locative 2 |
| -i |
| -en |
| - |
| ! locative 3 |
| -tu |
| -en |
| - |
| ! locative 4 |
| -o |
| -en |
| - |
| ! instrumental |
| -en |
| -en |
| - |
| ! ablative |
| -ar ~ -ári |
| -ar |
| -ar ~ -ári |
| -ar ~ -ári |
| - |
| ! vocative |
| -é, -aá (for God) |
| | -án (used with voc particle é: ‘hey, o’ …) | |}
Pronouns
Only the first and second person pronouns have distinct direct and oblique forms.
::{| class="wikitable" |+ First and second person pronouns ! rowspan=2 | Case ! colspan="2" | Singular ! colspan="2" | Plural |- ! 1st !! 2nd ! 1st !! 2nd |- ! Direct | aʋá | tu | ispá
| pisá |
|---|
| ! Oblique |
| ma |
| ta |
| ispá |
| pisá |
| } |
Interrogative and indefinite pronouns are closely related and mostly homophonous.
::{| class="wikitable" |+ Interrogative and indefinite pronouns ! rowspan=2 | Case ! colspan=2 | Pronominal !! colspan=2 | Adjectival |- ! Interrogative !! Indefinite !! Interrogative !! Indefinite |- ! Direct | ka ‘who?’ | kaá ‘someone’ | rowspan=2 | kos ‘whose’, ‘whom’ | rowspan=2 | kos di ‘whosever’, ‘whomever’ |- ! Oblique | kos ‘whom?’
| kos ‘someone’ |
|---|
| ! Direct |
| kyá ‘what?’ |
| kya ‘some’; ‘any’ (in negative contexts) |
| rowspan=2 |
| rowspan=2 |
| - |
| ! Oblique |
| khyo ‘what?’ |
| |- ! Direct | kyaγ ‘what?’ | kyaáγ ‘something | rowspan=2 | kya ‘what’
| kya ‘a’, ‘some’, ‘any’ |
|---|
| ! Oblique |
| khyo ‘what?’ |
| khyo ‘something’ |
| kyá.di ‘any’ |
| - |
| ! Direct |
| kí ‘which one?’ |
| kiʋál(u~i) di ‘whichever one’ |
| kí ‘which? (out of a specific set)’ |
| kya ‘a’, ‘some’, ‘any’ |
| - |
| ! Oblique |
| kí ‘which one?’ |
| kiʋálo di ‘whichever one’ |
| khyo ‘what?’ |
| kyá.di ‘any’ |
| } |
Demonstrative pronouns in Khowar display a three-term deictic system based on distance and visibility: proximal (+ near, + visible), distal (Ø near, Ø visible), and remote (− near, − visible). They have both a basic and extended form which is formed with h(a). The emphatic form is usually used when something is mentioned for the first time.
::{| class="wikitable" |+ Demonstrative pronouns ! rowspan=2 | ! colspan=2 | Singular !! colspan=2 | Plural |- ! Direct !! Oblique !! Direct !! Oblique |- ! Proximal | (ha)yá ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’; ‘this person/thing’ | (ha)mó ‘him’, ‘her’, ‘it’; ‘his’, ‘hers’, ‘its’ | (ha)mít ‘they’, ‘these people/things’
| (ha)mítan ‘them’; ‘theirs’ |
|---|
| ! Distal |
| (h)es ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’, ‘that one’ |
| (h)oró ‘him’, ‘her’, ‘it’; ‘his’‘hers’, ‘its’ |
| (h)et ‘they’, ‘those people/things |
| (h)étan ‘them’; ‘theirs’ |
| - |
| ! Remote |
| (ha)sé ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’; ‘that one’ |
| (ha)toγó ~ (ha)toó ‘him’, ‘her’, ‘it’; ‘his’, ‘hers’, ‘its’ |
| (ha)tét ‘they’ |
| (ha)tétan ‘them’; ‘theirs’ |
| } |
Notes
References
Additional references
- Bashir, Elena (2001) "Spatial Representation in Khowar". Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
- L'Homme, Erik (1999) Parlons Khowar. Langue et culture de l'ancien royaume de Chitral au Pakistan. Paris: L'Harmattan.
- Morgenstierne, Georg (1936) "Iranian Elements in Khowar". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. VIII, London.
- Badshah Munir Bukhari (2001) Khowar language. University publisher. Pakistan
- Morgenstierne, Georg (1947) "Some Features of Khowar Morphology". Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap, Vol. XIV, Oslo.
- Morgenstierne, Georg (1957) Sanskritic Words in Khowar. Felicitation Volume Presented to S. K. Belvalkar. Benares. 84–98 [Reprinted in Morgenstierne (1973): Irano-Dardica, 267–72]
- Mohammad Ismail Sloan (1981) Khowar-English Dictionary. Peshawar. .
- Zeal News
- Cultural diversity of Chitral, Chitral Today.
References
- "Development of Khowar as a Literacy Language, Results of interaction between linguists and language community: Case study in Chitral, Northern Pakistan". Govt Degree College Chitral.
- (26 July 2007). "The Indo-Aryan Languages". Routledge.
- Cardona, George. (2007). "The Indo-Aryan Languages".
- Heegård Petersen, Jan. (30 September 2015). "Kalasha texts – With introductory grammar". Acta Linguistica Hafniensia.
- M. Oranskij, “Indo-Iranica IV. Tadjik (Régional) Buruǰ ‘Bouleau,’” in Mélanges linguistiques offerts à Émile Benveniste, Paris, 1975, pp. 435–40.
- {{LSI. 8. 2. year-1919
- O'Brien, Donatus James Thomond. (1895). "Grammar and vocabulary of the K̲h̲owâr dialect (Chitrâli)". Civil and military gazette press.
- Leitner, Gottlieb William. (1880). "Kafiristan. Section 1: the Bashgeli Kafirs and their language". Dilbagroy.
- Rensch, Calvin Ross. (1992). "Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan: Languages of Chitral". National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University.
- Dani, Ahmad Hasan. (2001). "History of Northern Areas of Pakistan: Upto 2000 A.D.". Sang-e-Meel Publications.
- Morgenstierne, Georg. (1974). "Cultures of the Hindukush: selected papers from the Hindu-Kush Cultural Conference held at Moesgård 1970". Franz Steiner.
- Edelman, D. I.. (1983). "The Dardic and Nuristani Languages". Institut vostokovedenii︠a︡ (Akademii︠a︡ nauk SSSR).
- (2017). "Khowar". Journal of the International Phonetic Association.
- (2003). "The Indo-Aryan Languages". [[Routledge]].
- (2000). "Nationalism: Critical Concepts in Political Science". Taylor & Francis.
- Ahmadriza, Fareed. Hussain, Mumtaz. {{nq. کھوار حروف تہجی کی تاریخ ''History of the Khowar Alphabet'' [http://www.mahraka.com/khowar_alphabets.html http://www.mahraka.com/khowar_alphabets.html]
- Bashir, Elena. (2025). "A Grammar of Khowar: Descriptive and comparative analysis". UCL Press.
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