| Kalasha | |
|---|---|
| Kal'as'amondr / کالؕاشؕا موندر | |
 | |
| Native to | Pakistan (Chitral District) |
| Region | Kalasha Valleys |
| Ethnicity | Kalash |
Native speakers | 5,000 (2000)[1] |
| Dialects | |
| Arabic script, Latin script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | kls |
| Glottolog | kala1372 |
| ELP | Kalasha |
| Linguasphere | 59-AAB-ab |
| Part of a series on |
| Kalash people |
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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.
- ^ Kalasha at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ 1998 Census Report of Pakistan. (2001). Population Census Organization, Statistics Division, Government of Pakistan.
- ^ Heegård Petersen, Jan (30 September 2015). "Kalasha texts – With introductory grammar". Acta Linguistica Hafniensia. 47 (sup1): 1–275. doi:10.1080/03740463.2015.1069049. ISSN 0374-0463. S2CID 218660179.
- ^ "Richard Strand's Nuristân Site: The Kalasha of Kalashüm". Archived from the original on 1 November 2001. Retrieved 1 November 2001., http://nuristan.info/Nuristani/Kalasha/kalasha.html