Dameli (دَميلي), also Damia, Damiabaasha or Gidoj, is an

Indo-Aryan language The Indo-Aryan languages (or sometimes Indic languages) are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily concentrated in India, Pa ...

of the Dardic subgroup spoken by approximately 5,000 people in the Domel Town, in the

Chitral District Chitral District ( ur, ) was the largest district in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, covering an area of 14,850 km², before splitting into Upper Chitral District and Lower Chitral District in 2018. Part of the Malakand Div ...

of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. The Domel or Damel Valley is about ten miles south of

Drosh Drosh ( ur, دروش) is a city located in the Chitral District of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan.The city has a population of about 20,000 people. History Drosh town was the property of Mehtar of Chitral. Mehtar appointed his clos ...

on the East Side of the Chitral or Kunar river, on the road from the Mirkhani Fort to the pass of Arandu. Dameli is still the main language in the villages where it is spoken, and it is regularly learned by children. Most of the men speak

Pashto Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani (). Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official langua ...

as a second language, and some also speak

Khowar Khowar () or Chitrali, is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken in Chitral and surrounding areas in Pakistan. Khowar is the lingua franca of Chitral, and it is also spoken in the Gupis-Yasin and Ghizer districts of Gilgit-Baltistan, as we ...

and

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Georg Morgenstierne Georg Valentin von Munthe af Morgenstierne (2 January 1892 – 3 March 1978) was a Norwegian professor of linguistics with the University of Oslo (UiO). He specialized in Indo-Iranian languages. Studies During the years 1923 to 1971, Morgens ...

, published in 1942: "Notes on Dameli: A Kafir-Dardic Language of the Chitral". A sociolinguistic survey written by Kendall Decker (1992) contains a chapter on Dameli.

Classification

The language is classified as an

of the Dardic subgroup. The Dardic languages were first thought to be as an independent branch within Indo-Iranian, but today they are placed within Indo-Aryan following Morgenstierne's work.

Phonology

The following tables set out the phonology of the Dameli Language.

Vowels

Consonants

References

External links

Richard Strand's Nuristan site
with relevant material on closely related languages in Afghanistan *Perder, Emily.
A Grammatical Description of Dameli
' {{Dardic languages Dardic languages Languages of Chitral Languages of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa