Khowar
Indo-Aryan language of the Dardic group spoken in Chitral and Gilgit region of Pakistan
Khowar (کھووار, Khōwār, [kʰɔːwɑːɾ]), also known by its common exonym Chitrali, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Dardic group, primarily spoken by the Kho people (Chitralis), native to the Chitral region and surrounding areas of Pakistan.
Khowar is the lingua franca of Chitral, and it is also spoken in the Gupis-Yasin and Ghizer districts of Gilgit-Baltistan, as well as in the Upper Swat district.
Speakers of Khowar have also migrated heavily to Pakistan's major urban centres, with Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar having significant populations. It is also spoken as a second language by the Kalash people.
Names
The native name of the language is Khō-wār, meaning "language (wār) of the Kho people". During the British Raj, it was known to the English as Chitrālī (a derived adjective from the name of the Chitral region) or Qāshqārī. Among the Pashtuns and Badakhshanis, it is known as Kashkār. Another name, used by Leitner in 1880, is Arnyiá or Arniya, derived from the Shina language name for the part of the Yasin (a valley in Gilgit-Baltistan) where Khowar is spoken.
History
The Khowar language expanded throughout Chitral from the northern part of the region, specifically from the Mulkhow and Torkhow Valley. According to Morgenstierne, the original abode of the Khowar language was northern Chitral in the valleys around Mastuj.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Khowar” as indo-Aryan language of the Dardic group spoken in Chitral and Gilgit region of Pakistan. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q938216. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1880.
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This entry incorporates text from “Khowar” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.