Urtsuniwar
Dialect of the Chitrali Kalasha language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Urtsuniwar or Urchuniwar (اُرچؕنوار) is a dialect of the Kalasha-mun spoken in the Urtsun Valley of Chitral, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.[2] The total number of speakers is estimated to be around 2,900–5,700 peoples.[2]
| Urtsuniwar | |
|---|---|
| Urchuniwar | |
| اُرچؕنوار | |
| |
| Native to | Pakistan |
| Region | Urtsun Valley |
| Ethnicity | Southern Kalash |
Native speakers | (2,900–5,700 cited 1992)[1] |
| Perso-Arabic script (Nastaliq) | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
Similarity
It has been debated whether Urtsuniwar is a distinct language or a dialect of Kalasha-mun. Urtsuniwar and Kalasha-mun exhibit 70% mutual intelligibility.[3] Urtsuniwar also shares some similarities with the Ushojo.[4]
History
The Kafirs of Urtsun were among the last pagans in Afghanistan and Pakistan to convert to Islam 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.[5][6] They renamed their language from Kalasha-mun to Urtsuniwar and later borrowed heavily from the Khowar, changing their identity.[7] Subsequently, Urtsuniwar started to diverge into a distinct dialect of Kalasha-mun.
