Kalasha language

Kalasha
Kal'as'amondr, کالؕاشؕا
Native to	Pakistan (Chitral District)
Region	Kalasha Valleys
Ethnicity	Kalash
Native speakers	5,000 (2000)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Dardic Chitrali Kalasha
Dialects	Urtsuniwar
Writing system	Arabic script, Latin script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kls
Glottolog	kala1372
ELP	Kalasha
Linguasphere	59-AAB-ab

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Kalasha (IPA: [kaɭaʂaː], locally: Kal'as'amondr) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Kalash people, in the Chitral District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. There are an estimated 4,100 speakers of Kalasha.^[2] It is an endangered language and there is an ongoing language shift to Khowar.^[3]

Kalasha should not be confused with the nearby Nuristani language Waigali (Kalasha-ala). According to Badshah Munir Bukhari, a researcher on the Kalash, "Kalasha" is also the ethnic name for the Nuristani inhabitants of a region southwest of the Kalasha Valleys, in the Waygal and middle Pech Valleys of Afghanistan's Nuristan Province. The name "Kalasha" seems to have been adopted for the Kalash people by the Kalasha speakers of Chitral from the Nuristanis of Waygal, who for a time expanded up to southern Chitral several centuries ago.^[4] However, there is no close connection between the Indo-Aryan language Kalasha-mun (Kalasha) and the Nuristani language Kalasha-ala (Waigali), which descend from different branches of the Indo-Iranian languages.