The younger generation learns Kalasha from family or at school. Community language shift is moving toward other languages of the area, especially Khowar and Pashto, due to religious conversion and migration.

Script developed with Gregory and Elsa Cooper

"The Kalasha community, which follows an ancient religion and lives in valleys in Chitral, is in danger of losing its languages. Some young people are reported to have left the language when they converted to Islam (Decker in SSNP Vol. 5, 1992: 112)."

The central subgroup is further subdivided into northern and southern groupings. The northern grouping includes Khowar (or Chitrali, Chitrari, Chatrori, Arniya) and Kalasha in the Chitral region. The southern grouping includes Tirahi, Gawar (or Gawar-bati, lit., “language of the Gawar people”), Katarkalai (or Wotapuri, referring to another dialect), Shumashti, Glangali (closely related Ningalami, reported in the literature but apparently no longer extant), and Pashai, a large group of extremely divergent dialects or closely related languages, in the southern part of Nūrestān and adjacent areas.

Since Urdu became the national language of Pakistan in 1947 and increasingly functions as the country’s lingua franca, it has replaced Persian as a compulsory language in the curriculum. From the 1980s the presence of Persian in the educational system became negligible. Despite this, a significant influx of additional Perso-Arabic words has entered the lexicons of all the languages of Pakistan through Urdu.