The Pamir languages are an areal group of the Eastern Iranian languages, spoken by numerous people in the Pamir Mountains, primarily along the

Panj River The Panj (russian: Пяндж; fa, رودخانه پنج) (; tg, Панҷ, پنج), traditionally known as the Ochus River and also known as ''Pyandzh'' (derived from its Russian name "Пяндж"), is a tributary of the Amu Darya. The river ...

and its tributaries. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Pamir language family was sometimes referred to as the Ghalchah languages by western scholars.In his 1892 work on the

Avestan language Avestan (), or historically Zend, is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages: Old Avestan (spoken in the 2nd millennium BCE) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BCE). They are known only from their conjoined use as the scrip ...

Abraham Valentine Williams Jackson, The later Iranian languages, New Persian, Kurdish, Afghan, Ossetish, Baluchi, Ghalach and some minor modern dialects." The term Ghalchah is no longer used to refer to the Pamir languages or the native speakers of these languages. One of the most prolific researchers of the Pamir languages was

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

Ivan Ivanovich Zarubin Ivan Ivanovich Zarubin ( rus, Иван Иванович Зарубин; 27 September 1887 – 3 February 1964) was a Soviet specialist of Iranian languages, particularly Pamir languages. Life Zarubin was born in 1887.Paul Bergne The Birth of T ...

Geographic distribution

The Pamirian languages are spoken primarily in the

Badakhshan Province Badakhshan Province (Persian/ Uzbek: , ''Badaxšān'') is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the northeastern part of the country. It is bordered by Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan in the north and the Pakistani regions of Lower ...

of northeastern

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

and the

Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region Gorno-Badakhshan, officially the Badakhshan Mountainous Autonomous Region,, abbr. / is an autonomous region in eastern Tajikistan, in the Pamir Mountains. It makes up nearly forty-five percent of the country's land area, but only two percen ...

of eastern

Tajikistan Tajikistan (, ; tg, Тоҷикистон, Tojikiston; russian: Таджикистан, Tadzhikistan), officially the Republic of Tajikistan ( tg, Ҷумҳурии Тоҷикистон, Jumhurii Tojikiston), is a landlocked country in Centr ...

. Pamirian languages are also spoken in Xinjiang and the Pamir language Sarikoli is spoken beyond the

Sarikol Range The Sarikol Range (russian: Сарыкольский хребет; zh, s=萨雷阔勒岭, 色勒库尔山脉; tg, Рашти Куҳи Сариқӯл) is a mountain range in the Pamirs on the border of Tajikistan and the People's Republic of China ...

on the Afghanistan-China border and thus qualifies as the easternmost of the extant Iranian languages. Wakhi communities are also found in the adjacent

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 ...

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (; ps, خېبر پښتونخوا; Urdu, Hindko: خیبر پختونخوا) commonly abbreviated as KP or KPK, is one of the Administrative units of Pakistan, four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the Geography of Pakistan, ...

and in

Gojal Gojal ( Wakhi: , Kyrgyz: ), also called Upper Hunza, is situated in the north western part of Pakistan. It borders China at the Khunjerab Pass, and Afghanistan at the Chapursan valley. In 2019, Gojal Valley became the second Sub-Division wit ...

Gilgit Baltistan Gilgit (; Shina: ; ur, ) is the capital city of Gilgit–Baltistan, Pakistan. The city is located in a broad valley near the confluence of the Gilgit River and the Hunza River. It is a major tourist destination in Pakistan, serving as a h ...

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

. The only other living member of the Southeastern Iranian group is

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 ...

Classification

No features uniting the Pamir languages as a single subgroup of Iranian have been demonstrated.Antje Wendtland (2009), ''The position of the Pamir languages within East Iranian''
Orientalia Suecana LVIII
"The Pamir languages are a group of East Iranian languages which are linguistically quite diverse and cannot be traced back to a common ancestor. The term Pamir languages is based on their geographical position rather than on their genetic closeness. Exclusive features by which the Pamir languages can be distinguished from all other East Iranian languages cannot be found either." The Ethnologue lists the Pamir languages along with Pashto as Southeastern Iranian, however, according to

Encyclopedia Iranica An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...

, the Pamirian languages and Pashto belong to the North-Eastern Iranian branch.Nicholas Sims-Williams
Eastern Iranian languages
in Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, 2010. ''"The Modern Eastern Iranian languages are even more numerous and varied. Most of them are classified as North-Eastern: Ossetic; Yaghnobi (which derives from a dialect closely related to Sogdian); the Shughni group (Shughni, Roshani, Khufi, Bartangi, Roshorvi, Sarikoli), with which Yazghulyami (Sokolova 1967) and the now extinct Wanji (J. Payne in Schmitt, p. 420) are closely linked; Ishkashmi, Sanglichi, and Zebaki; Wakhi; Munji and Yidgha; and Pashto."'' Members of the Pamirian language area include four reliable groups: a Shughni-Yazgulyam group including Shughni, Sarikoli, and Yazgulyam; Munji and Yidgha; Ishkashimi and related dialects; and Wakhi. They have the subject-object-verb syntactic

typology Typology is the study of types or the systematic classification of the types of something according to their common characteristics. Typology is the act of finding, counting and classification facts with the help of eyes, other senses and logic. Ty ...

Václav Blažek Václav Blažek (born 23 April 1959 in Sokolov, Czechoslovakia) is a Czech historical linguist. He is a professor at Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic) and also teaches at the University of West Bohemia ( Pilsen, Czech Republic). His ma ...

(2019) suggests that the Pamir languages have a

Burushaski Burushaski (; ) is a language isolate spoken by Burusho people, who reside almost entirely in northern Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, with a few hundred speakers in northern Jammu and Kashmir, India. In Pakistan, Burushaski is spoken by people ...

-like substratum. Although

is today spoken in Pakistan to the south of the Pamir language area, Burushaski formerly had a much wider geographic distribution before being assimilated by Indo-Iranian languages.Blažek, Václav. 2019.
Toward the question of Yeniseian homeland in perspective of toponymy
'. 14th Annual Sergei Starostin Memorial Conference on Comparative-Historical Linguistics. Moscow: RSUH.

Subgroups

Shughni-Yazgulami branch

The Shughni, Sarikoli, and Yazgulyam languages belong to the Shughni-Yazgulami branch. There are about 75,000 speakers of languages in this family in

and

(including the dialects of Rushani, Bartangi, Oroshori, Khufi, and Shughni). In 1982, there were about 20,000 speakers of Sarikoli in the

Sarikol Valley Sarikol, Sariqol, or Sarykol from Turkic languages meaning "yellow lake" may refer to: * Sarikol Range, a mountain range on the border with Tajikistan and China * Tashkurgan, a town in Xinjiang, China that historically was also known as Sarikol * ...

located in the

Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County (also known as Taxkorgan County, sometimes spelled Tashkurgan, Tashkorgan and Tash Kurghan Tadzhik Autonomous Hsien) is an autonomous county of Kashgar Prefecture in Western Xinjiang, China. The county seat is t ...

Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...

Province, China. Shughni and Sarikoli are not mutually intelligible. In 1994, there were 4000 speakers of Yazgulyam along the Yazgulyam River in

. Yazgulyam is not written. The

Vanji language The Vanji language, also spelt Vanchi and Vanži, is an extinct Iranian language, one of the areal group of Pamir languages. It was spoken in the Vanj River valley in what is now the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of Tajikistan. In the 19th ...

was spoken in the Vanj river valley the

, and was related to Yazgulyam. In the 19th century, the region was forcibly annexed to the Bukharan Emirate and a violent assimilation campaign was undertaken. By the end of the 19th century the Vanji language had disappeared, displaced by Tajik Persian. Most language speakers and others in Tajikistan refer to languages in this group as 'Pamirski" or 'Pamir'. (e.g. "I can speak Pamir, Ishkashem and Wakhi")

Munji-Yidgha branch

The Munji and Yidgha languages are closely related. There are about 6,000 speakers of Yidgha in Upper

Lotkoh Lotkoh is an administrative unit, known as Union Council, of Chitral District in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Chitral is the largest district in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, covering an area of 14,850 km². It ...

Valley,

, and in 1992 there were around 2,500 speakers of Munji in the Munjan and Mamalgha Valleys of

, northeastern

. Munji-Yidgha shares with Bactrian a development *ð > , absent from the other three Pamir groups. The extinct

Sarghulami Sarghulami is an extinct Iranian languages, Iranian language formerly spoken in the village of Sarghulam in Badakhshan Province, Badakhshan, Afghanistan, Afghanistan. It was recorded by Russian Empire, Russian professor Ivan Zarubin in the 1920's ...

language of

Badakhshan Badakhshan is a historical region comprising parts of modern-day north-eastern Afghanistan, eastern Tajikistan, and Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County in China. Badakhshan Province is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan. Much of historic Ba ...

is thought to be of the Munji-Yidgha branch.

Sanglechi-Ishkashimi

There are about 2,500 speakers of Sanglechi and Ishkashmi in

and

(dialects: Sanglechi, Ishkashmi,

Zebaki Sanglechi is an Iranian language spoken in villages in the Zebak District of Afghanistan: Dashte Rubat, Esketul, Faruq, Flaxmadek, Sar-Sanglech, and Takya. It is also spoken in Tajikistan, where it is called Sanglich. The name comes from the San ...

). They are not written languages.

Wakhi

There are around 58,000 speakers of the

Wakhi language Wakhi (Wakhi: /В̌aхi, ) is an Indo-European language in the Eastern Iranian branch of the language family spoken today in Wakhan District, Northern Afghanistan and also in Tajikistan, Northern Pakistan and China. Classification and distribu ...

, China,

, and

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

Status

The vast majority of Pamir speakers in Tajikistan and Afghanistan also use Tajik (Persian) as a literary language, which is—unlike the languages of the Pamir group—a

Southwestern Iranian The Western Iranic languages are a branch of the Iranic languages, attested from the time of Old Persian (6th century BC) and Median language, Median. Languages The traditional Northwestern branch is a convention for non-Southwestern languages, ...

tongue. The language group is endangered, with the total number of speakers roughly around 100,000 in 1990.

Bibliography

*Payne, John, "Pamir languages" in ''Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum'', ed. Schmitt (1989), 417–444.

References

External links

Ethnolinguistic map of Tajikistan

* ttp://www.angelfire.com/sd/tajikistanupdate/engpamirlanguages.html English-Ishkashimi- Zebaki-Wakhi-Yazghulami Vocabularybr>A Short List of Yazghulami Words

Grierson G. A. Ishkashmi, Zebaki, and Yazghulami, an account of three Eranian dialects. (1920)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pamir Languages Pamir languages, Eastern Iranian languages Endangered Iranian languages