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Alphabet (Khowar letters)
Khowar is written right to left; the letters it shares with Urdu stand here in Urdu order. Its four own letters ݮ ݯ ݰ ݱ stand in the second column beside the Urdu letter they pair with; څ and ځ, shared with Pashto, follow چ. Primers differ on exactly where the added letters go. Letters marked "Arabic words" mostly appear in borrowed religious and learned words.
Vowel marks (aʿrāb)
Usually left out, as in Urdu; useful for spelling out an unfamiliar Khowar word. Each sits on the letter before it.
Punctuation
Urdu punctuation: the dash-like ۔ ends a sentence; ، ؛ ؟ face right to left.
Digits
The Urdu forms of the Eastern Arabic digits; numbers run left to right even inside right-to-left text.
Currency
Prices in Chitral are in Pakistani rupees, written Rs or روپے.
Where it's spoken
Khowar is spoken in northern Pakistan: Chitral and the upper Ghizer valleys of Gilgit-Baltistan.
Chitral
Tirich Mir above Chitral, and the horses of the Shandur polo festival.
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The Khowar alphabet and its script
Khowar (کھوار), "the language of the Kho", also called Chitrali, is a Dardic language of the Indo-Aryan family and the main language of Chitral in Pakistan's far north. It is written right to left in the Perso-Arabic script, in the flowing Nastaliq style used for Urdu, and it shares most of its letters with Urdu: the Persian letters پ چ ژ گ, the Urdu retroflex stops ٹ ڈ, ڑ for Khowar's velarized l, ھ for aspiration and ے for e at the end of a word.
Khowar has more hissing and hushing sounds than Urdu, and its alphabet gives them letters of their own. In 1921 Prince Nasir-ul-Mulk of Chitral set out the extra letters in a Khowar primer, Khowar Qaida, and later primers and dictionaries kept them. CLDR, the Unicode project's language database, keeps no letter list for Khowar, so this page gives the full set: the letters Khowar shares with Urdu and the six that write its own sounds.
Khowar letters ݮ ݯ ݰ ݱ, څ and ځ
English has one ch and one sh; Khowar has three of each. The affricates come in three places: څ ts and ځ dz with the tongue at the teeth, چ ch and ج j just behind them, and ݯ c̣ and ݮ j̣ with the tongue tip curled back, the sounds linguists call retroflex. The hissing sounds follow the same pattern: س s, ش sh and the curled-back ݰ ṣ; ز z, ژ zh and the curled-back ݱ ẓ. Swapping one for its neighbour changes the sound, and often the word.
The four Khowar letters are Arabic shapes with a small ط (tah) added, the same small mark Urdu puts on ٹ ڈ ڑ to make them retroflex: ݮ is ح with a small tah below, ݯ is ح with a small tah and two dots, ݰ is س with a small tah and two dots, and ݱ is ر with a small tah and two dots. Each is one Unicode character, not something to assemble from a base letter and loose marks. Aspirated consonants are written with ھ as in Urdu, and Khowar counts such a pair as one letter: ݯھ is c̣ with a puff of breath, and the name کھوار itself begins with کھ, kh.
Short vowels are usually left unwritten, as in Urdu. To spell a word out, use َ zabar (a), ِ zer (i), ُ pesh (u), ْ jazm for a consonant with no vowel after it and ّ tashdīd for a doubled one. Sentences end with the Urdu full stop ۔; the comma ،, semicolon ؛ and question mark ؟ face right to left, and numbers use the Urdu digits ۰ ۱ ۲ ۳ ۴ ۵ ۶ ۷ ۸ ۹.
How to type the Khowar alphabet: keyboards and fonts
The standard Urdu keyboards in Windows, macOS and phone apps have no keys for ݮ ݯ ݰ ݱ, and it is Pashto keyboards, not Urdu ones, that carry څ and ځ. Dedicated Khowar keyboards fill the gap: the free Keyman Khowar keyboard, and the CRULP Khowar Phonetic Keyboard, which puts the added letters on the Shift and AltGr layers. In Microsoft Word you can type a code and press Alt X: 076E for ݮ, 076F for ݯ, 0770 for ݰ, 0771 for ݱ, 0685 for څ and 0681 for ځ. In HTML write ݮ to ݱ. Or tap any letter on this page to copy it.
The four Khowar letters arrived late in computing. They were proposed to Unicode in 2006 by Elena Bashir, Sarmad Hussain and Deborah Anderson, together with letters for Torwali and Burushaski, and were encoded in Unicode 5.1 in 2008; before that, the first digital edition of a Khowar dictionary had to use stand-ins. Font support still varies: in 2019 a Khowar writer reported to Unicode that the special letters failed to join in Windows 10. If a Khowar word shows boxes or falls apart into separate letters, switch to a font that covers Unicode's Arabic Supplement block.
Where the Khowar language is spoken
CLDR estimates about 380,000 speakers of Khowar, all of them counted in Pakistan . Its home is Chitral, the long valley in the north of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa below Tirich Mir, the highest peak of the Hindu Kush. Khowar is also spoken across the Shandur Pass in the upper valleys of Ghizer in Gilgit-Baltistan, and by Chitrali families in Peshawar, Islamabad and other cities. In Chitral it is the common language between speakers of the valley's smaller languages; its nearest relative is Kalasha, the language of the Kalash valleys, and the small Yidgha language has borrowed Khowar's ݯ.
Urdu is the language of school and government, and many Khowar words come from Persian, Arabic and Urdu, so the Urdu collection covers most of the letters here. Pashto shares څ and ځ, and Balti is another northern language of Pakistan written in Urdu letters. For the flag, the rupee and the emoji of the whole country, see the Pakistan collection.
How to use them
5 situationsKlik for at kopiereKhowar Alphabet & Letters combos
13Godt at vide
- Khowar's extra letters were devised in 1921 by Prince Nasir-ul-Mulk of Chitral; Unicode encoded them 87 years later, in Unicode 5.1 in 2008.
- Where English has one ch and one sh, Khowar has three of each, and its alphabet gives each sound a letter, among them its own ݯ and ݰ.
- Most summers Chitral and Gilgit play polo on the Shandur Pass, at about 3,700 metres one of the highest polo grounds in the world, on the edge of Khowar country.
- Tirich Mir, 7,708 metres, the highest mountain of the Hindu Kush, is seen from Chitral town.
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7What is the Khowar alphabet?
Khowar is written right to left in Perso-Arabic letters in Nastaliq, most of them shared with Urdu, and six that write its own sounds: ݮ ݯ ݰ ݱ, found only in Khowar, for sounds made with the tongue curled back, and څ (ts) and ځ (dz), shared with Pashto. All of them are on this page to copy.
How many letters are in the Khowar alphabet?
Counts differ between primers, mainly because some count aspirated pairs such as ݯھ and کھ as letters of their own. In single characters, Khowar uses the letters it shares with Urdu and the six on this page that write its own sounds.
How do I type Khowar letters on a keyboard?
Install a Khowar keyboard, such as the free Keyman Khowar keyboard or the CRULP Khowar Phonetic Keyboard; the standard Urdu keyboard lacks ݮ ݯ ݰ ݱ. In Word type 076E, 076F, 0770 or 0771 and press Alt X. Or copy the letters here.
Is there a Khowar keyboard download?
Yes. Keyman offers a free Khowar keyboard, and CRULP published a Khowar Phonetic Keyboard that puts the added letters on the Shift and AltGr layers.
Is Khowar the same as Chitrali?
Yes. Khowar is the language's own name, from Kho, the people, and wār, language; Chitrali is the name others often use, after Chitral, where it is mainly spoken.
Is Khowar the same as Urdu?
No. Both are Indo-Aryan languages and Khowar is written with Urdu letters, but Khowar is a Dardic language with its own grammar and vocabulary, closest to Kalasha, and Urdu speakers do not understand it without learning it.
Why do Khowar letters show as boxes or not join?
The four Khowar letters ݮ ݯ ݰ ݱ were only added to Unicode in 2008, and some fonts still lack them or join them wrongly. Use a font that covers the Arabic Supplement block.
