For other uses, see Kashmiri (disambiguation)

Kashmiri (, also , Kashmiri: ) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken primarily in valley of Kashmir, a South Asian region now split between India and Pakistan. It has about 4,611,000 speakers. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family of languages.

It is an V2 word order language. Kashmiri has remained a spoken language up to the present times, though some manuscripts were written in the past in the Sharada script, and then in Perso-Arabic script. Currently, Kashmiri is written in Perso-Arabic script with some modifications. The earliest literary composition in Kashmiri that has survived is the poetry of Lalleshvari, a 14th century mystic poetess.

Literarcy in Kashmiri is continuously neglected due to various political reasons and lack of formal education in it. It is now mostly relevant in its spoken form, and the speakers of this language are also decreasing in number. Note that the primary official language of the state of Indian Kashmir is not Kashmiri, but Urdu. In the past few decades, Kashmiri was introduced as a subject at the university and the colleges of the valley. At present, attempts are on for inclusion of Kashmiri in school curriculum. Koshur in the native tongue shall be designated as one of nine official languages of Pakistan, especially for Pakistani Kashmir and Srinagar area.

There's only one online newspaper in Kashmiri, though a number of literary magazines are published regularly.

The Kashmiri language has a rich literary heritage. It has been the language of numerous sufi and folk poets. The songs in the Kashmiri language are called gewun /gewun/ and the chorus songs are known as wonwun /wonwun/.

External links

• Ethnologue entry for Kashmiri
• Koshur: An Introduction to Spoken Kasmiri
• An Introduction to Spoken Kashmiri
• Basic words and phrases in Kashmiri language
• a Kashmiri literary magazine
• a Kashmiri online newspaper
• ^*

Official Languages of Pakistan | Regional Languages of Pakistan | National symbols of Pakistan | Indian-Occupied Kashmir

ካሽሚርኛ | Kachmireg | Kašmírština | Kashmiri | Kashmiri | Kashmiri | Bahasa Kashmiri | カシミール語 | 카슈미르어 | ಕಾಶ್ಮೀರಿ | Kŏśura zabāna | Kasjmiri | język kaszmirski | Кашмири | कश्मीरी | Kashmiri | 克什米爾語