Linguistic tapestry North Pakistan As we shall see below today’s North Pakistan is the larger part of a linguistically diverse region at the crossroad between South and Central Asia. Before going to specifically describe the languages of North Pakistan it is necessary to have a brief introduction of Dardistan and the Dardic people. Dardistan Dardistan…
There are hundreds of folktales and myths in Torwali. A book of 15 folktales was published with Urdu and English translations. This book is known as Kookoo Bacha. Two of its stories were animated. These stories are The Luck (Qismat Si Qisa) and Anngag and Bangag. The YouTube links to these two animated stories are…
Music is a cultural construct, and culture refers to a set of behaviours, beliefs, social structures, and technologies of a population that are passed down from generation to generation. It includes social conventions related to art, dress, manner, religion, morality, ritual, dance and music. Alan Merriam (1964) describes three aspects to music: sound, behaviour, and…
A Dardic language of the Indo-Aryan family, Torwali is spoken in the Bahrain and Chail areas of District Swat in Northern Pakistan. According to some estimates the Torwali people count themselves more than 120,0001 while recent research counts the number of speakers of the Torwali language around 130,0002. ‘Possibly half of them live in the…
Introduction: The Torwali Language According to the online database of the languages spoken in the world, The Ethnologue (Simons, & Fennig, 2018), there are currently around 7,097 languages spoken in the world. Linguists predict that by the end of this century, more than half of these languages will be extinct, resulting in the loss of…
The Torwali language is said to have originated from the pre-Muslim Dardic communities of Pakistan (Viaro & Inam-ur-Rahim, 2002). The people who speak the language are called Torwalik or Torwal (Grierson, 1929). The area where Torwali is spoken is also known as Torwal by other Dardic communities like Gawri and Kohsitani. In Torwali folk literature, the entire…
The area where Torwali is spoken is also known as Torwal by other Dardic communities like Gawri and Kohsitani. In Torwali folk literature, the entire area is referred to Tu:aal (Torwal); for example, in this Torwali couplet: Du zar Tu:aal hu shid egi Saidu si Bachaa, Thamurd Jaen Chi Dherina wa ni hi yi Panah” (Torwali,…
