Pashayi - also known as Pashai - is a language (or a group of languages) spoken by the Pashai people in parts of Kapisa, Laghman, Nuristan, Kunar, and Nangarhar Provinces in Northeastern Afghanistan.
It belongs to the Indo-European language family, and is on the Dardic group of the Indo-Aryan branch.
It was spoken by over 216,842 people who are predominantly Muslim. Most of them are bilingual in Pashto with a literacy rate of about 25%, with the Pashai language having no written form prior to 2003. There are four main varieties, which are all mutually unintelligible: the Northeastern, the Northwestern, the Southeastern and the Southwestern. The inhabitants of the Korengal Valley in the Pech District of Kunar Province speak a variety of Pashai Language.
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)