Wanetsi
language spoken in northeastern Balochistan
Waṇetsi (Wanetsi: وڼېڅي), also called Tarīno (Wanetsi: ترينو) and sometimes Tsalgari (Wanetsi: څلګري), is an eastern Iranian language that is spoken mainly in northern regions of the Balochistan province of Pakistan. It is sometimes considered a distinct variety of Pashto and perhaps is a representation of a more archaic, or very early, form of Pashto. In some cases, Wanetsi shares similarities with the Pamir language of Munji, being a sort of bridge between the former and Pashto. However, Wanetsi is generally unintelligible to Pashto speakers.
It is spoken by the Tareen in Balochistan, Pakistan, primarily in Harnai (هرنای) (Harnai District) and Chawter (چوتېر) area in Sanjawi, northern Balochistan, Pakistan. The language is at risk of extinction due to lack of attention and a perception that it is a language of foreigners.
History
Professor Prods Oktor Skjærvø states:
"The Pashto area split into two dialect groups at a pre-literary period, represented today on the one hand
by all the dialects of modern Pashto and on the other by Waṇeci and by archaic remains in other Southeast dialects"
According to Encyclopædia Iranica Waṇetsi branched off from the other Pashto dialects in the Middle Iranian stage:
Some of Waṇetsi's particularities (e.g. šwī “twenty,” mōš “we,” [a]γa “of;” the pres. endings; retention of rž; loss of -t-) prove that it must have split off from Paṣ̌to at an early Middle Iranic stage, considerably before the constitution of a standard Paṣ̌to. They can scarcely have developed after the arrival of the Waṇetsi speakers in their present home, which is in no way topographically cut off from the rest of Paṣ̌to territory.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Wanetsi” as language spoken in northeastern Balochistan. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7967334. The Library of Congress control number is sh85145084. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wanetsi” 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.