The Nuristani languages (Pashto: نورستانی, nurestāni) are one of the three groups within the Indo-Iranian language family, alongside the much larger Indo-Aryan and Iranian groups. They have approximately 130,000 speakers primarily in eastern Afghanistan and a few adjacent valleys in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Chitral District, Pakistan. The region inhabited by the Nuristanis is located in the southern Hindukush mountains, and is drained by Alingar River in the west, Pech River in the center, and Landay Sin River and Kunar River in the east.
Many Nuristani languages are subject–object–verb (SOV), like most of the other Indo-Iranian languages adjacent to them, but distinct from the Dardic Kashmiri language for the apparent verb-second word order which is also notably used in most Germanic languages including Old English. The Nuristani languages were often confused with each other before concluding a third branch in Indo-Iranian, and also accounting many Burushaski loanwords present in Dardic.
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“No doubt, to a man of sense, travel offers advantages. As many languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so many times is he a man. A foreign country is a point of comparison, wherefrom to judge his own.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)