This video was made for educational purposes only. Non profit, educational, or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. All credits belong to the rightful owners. Language documentation and preservation.

Special Thanks to HPC 321

Wakhi (x̌ik zik)
Native to: Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan
Ethnicity: Wakhi
Native speakers: (20,000 in Pakistan (2016); 58,000 cited 1992–2012)
Language family: Indo-European (Indo-Iranian)

is an Indo-European language in the Eastern Iranian branch of the language family spoken today in Wakhan District, Northern Afghanistan and also in Tajikistan, Northern Pakistan and China.

Wakhi is one of several languages that belong to the areal Pamir language group. Its relationship to the other Iranian languages is not clear; in certain features Wakhi shows affinity to the extinct Saka language in particular.

The Wakhi people are occasionally called Pamiris and Guhjali. The origin of this language is Wakhan and it is, according to many sources, more than four thousand years old. It is spoken by the inhabitants of the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan, parts of Gilgit–Baltistan (the former NAs) of Pakistan, Gorno-Badakhshan region of Tajikistan, and Xinjiang in western China. The Wakhi use the self-appellation ‘X̌ik’ (ethnic) and suffix it with ‘wor’/’war’ to denote their language as ‘X̌ik-wor’ themselves. The noun ‘X̌ik’ comes from *waxša-ī̆ka- (an inhabitant of *Waxša- ‘Oxus’, for Wakhan, in Wakhi ‘Wux̌’. There are other equivalents for the name Wakhi (Anglicised) or Wakhani (Arabic and Persian), Vakhantsy (Russian), Gojali/Gojo (Dingrik-wor/Shina), Guyits/Guicho (Burushaski), Wakhigi/Wakhik-war (Kivi-wor/Khow-wor) and Cert (Turki). The language belongs, as yet to be confirmed according to studies and sources, to the southern group of the Pamir languages, in the Iranian group of the Indo-European family (450) of languages, where the different Ishkashmi, Shighni/…nani and Wakhi languages are included. A very rough estimate of the population of Wakhis is 58,000 worldwide. The Wakhi live in six different countries. In the Gilgit–Baltistan region of Pakistan, the Wakhi people mainly live in Gojal, Ishkoman, Darkut and in Chitral District's Broghol. They also live in some parts of Wakhan in Afghanistan, Gorno-Badakhshan in Tajikistan, Xinjiang in China, Russia and Turkey.

LINKS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wakhi_language
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snym-8FeCd8
http://cblle.tufs.ac.jp/med_min_lang/wakhi/
https://omniglot.com/writing/wakhi.php
https://elalliance.org/languages/iranic/wakhi/
https://www.ethnologue.com/language/WBL
Music: https://youtu.be/t4BIG1XlEcs

Want your beautiful language to be featured?
My email:
[email protected]