Urtsuniwar or Urchuniwar () is a dialect of the

Kalasha-mun Kalasha (, locally: ) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Kalash people, in the Chitral District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. There are an estimated 7,466 speakers of Kalasha according to the 2023 Census of Pakistan. It ...

spoken in the Urtsun Valley of

Chitral Chitral () is a city situated on the Kunar River, Chitral River in northern area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. It serves as the capital of the Lower Chitral District, and was previously the capital of Chitral District, and before ...

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (; ; , ; abbr. KP or KPK), formerly known as the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), is a Administrative units of Pakistan, province of Pakistan. Located in the Northern Pakistan, northwestern region of the country, Khyber ...

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

. The total number of speakers is estimated to be around 2,900–5,700 peoples.

Similarity

It has been debated whether Urtsuniwar is a distinct language or a dialect of

. Urtsuniwar and

exhibit 70% mutual intelligibility. Urtsuniwar also shares some similarities with the Ushojo.

History

The ''

Kafirs ''Kāfir'' (; , , or ; ; or ) is an Arabic-language term used by Muslims to refer to a non-Muslim, more specifically referring to someone who disbelieves in the Islamic God, denies his authority, and rejects the message of Islam a ...

'' of Urtsun were among the last pagans in

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

and

to convert to

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

in the mid-1900s. The last Urtsun Kafir was Mranzi, who had married a Kalasha from the Biriu valley and moved out of the valley in 1940, just as the conversion to Islam was completed.the Kalasha of Urtsun - A Cacopardo 1991 east & west magazine They renamed their language from

to Urtsuniwar and later borrowed heavily from the

Khowar Khowar (, ''Khōwār'', ), also known by its common exonym Chitrali, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Dardic group, primarily spoken by the Kho (Chitrali) people, native to the Chitral region and surrounding areas of Pakistan. Khowar is th ...

, changing their identity. Subsequently, Urtsuniwar started to diverge into a distinct dialect of Kalasha-mun.

References

Dardic languages Languages of Pakistan Languages of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa {{IndoAryan-lang-stub