| Also Known As: Khik,Wakhani,Wakhigi,Guhjali,Vakhan,Wakhi
Description:
Wakhi is an Indo-European language in the sub-branch of Southeastern Iranian languages and is intimately related to other Pamir languages and Pashto.
Wakhi is one of several languages that belong to the Pamir language group. A reflection of this is the fact that the Wakhi people are occasionally called Pamiris. The origin of this language is Wakhan in Afghanistan. A very rough estimate of the population of Wakhis is 50,000 worldwide. The Wakhi live in four different countries. In the northern areas of Pakistan, the Wakhi people mainly live in Gojal, Ishkoman, Darkut and Broghol. They also live in some parts of Gorno-Badakhshan in Tajikistan and Xinjiang in China. The religion of the Wakhi is Shia Ismaili Islam; they are followers of Aga Khan IV.
In Tajikistan the Wakhi and other communities that speak one of the Pamir languages refer to themselves as Pamiri or Badakhshani and there has been a movement to separate their identity from that of the majority Persian-speaking Tajiks. Linguists universally refer to Wakhi as an East Iranian language independent of Tajik Persian, but many Tajik nationalists insist that Wakhi and other Pamir languages are actually dialects of Tajik.
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