Kashmiri Language: Where It Is Spoken and Useful Phrases

The Kashmiri language, which its speakers call Koshur, is spoken by around seven million people, almost all of them in the Kashmir Valley across the Line of Control. On the Pakistani side it is a minority language, but it survives in clear pockets: villages in the Neelum and Leepa valleys, and older families in Muzaffarabad city and Hattian. It is not related to Pahari or Urdu as closely as people assume, and it has one of the oldest literatures in the region.

This guide covers where you will still hear Kashmiri in Azad Kashmir, how it differs from the other languages around it, its poets and scripts, and a few phrases that are worth knowing if you are staying in a Kashmiri-speaking village.

Where is Kashmiri spoken in Azad Kashmir?

Kashmiri is spoken by roughly five per cent of Azad Kashmir's population. The 1998 census counted 132,450 Kashmiri speakers in the territory, and they were concentrated in three districts: Neelum, where about a fifth of people spoke it, and Muzaffarabad and Hattian, at about 15 per cent each. At the 2017 census, about 350,000 people declared Kashmiri as their first language. Elsewhere in AJK, in Mirpur, Kotli, Bagh and Poonch, you will rarely hear it.

The Neelum Valley

The Neelum Valley is where Kashmiri is strongest on this side of the Line of Control. It is the second most widely spoken language in the valley after Hindko, and it is the majority language in at least a dozen villages; in about half of those, it is the only mother tongue. The Kashmiri of Neelum is closer to the speech of Kupwara, just across the mountains in the northern Kashmir Valley, than to the Kashmiri of Muzaffarabad.

Hindko is the common language of the valley, and almost every Kashmiri speaker there also speaks it, along with Urdu. Higher up there are two communities who speak varieties of Shina, and near Athmuqam the village of Kundal Shahi has its own endangered language. Our guide to Neelum Valley culture covers that whole mix.

Leepa Valley

Leepa, in Jhelum Valley district and reached over the Reshian pass from Muzaffarabad, is a farming valley on the Line of Control where Kashmiri is widely spoken alongside Pahari, Gojri and Hindko. It is also known for its wooden Kashmiri-style houses and terraced rice fields. Our Leepa Valley guide covers the road and when to go.

Muzaffarabad city

In Muzaffarabad city, Kashmiri survives among a minority of families rather than as a street language. The Muzaffarabad dialect is distinct from the Neelum one, although speakers of the two understand each other. Pahari and Hindko are far more common on the street.

Is Kashmiri dying out in Azad Kashmir?

It is under pressure. Linguist Tariq Rahman described Kashmiri speakers in Azad Kashmir gradually moving to Pahari, Hindko or Urdu, and more recent studies point to the same shift, with the lack of institutional support as a main reason. A Kashmiri Language Committee was set up by the AJK government in 1983 to promote teaching, but the attempts to bring Kashmiri into schools did not take hold, and Urdu remained the language of education and government.

In practice, this means you are most likely to hear Kashmiri spoken by older people, at home and in villages, while their grandchildren answer in Hindko or Urdu. Across the Line of Control the picture is different: Kashmiri is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and, since 2020, an official language of the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

How is Kashmiri different from Urdu, Pahari and Hindko?

Kashmiri belongs to the Dardic group of Indo-Aryan languages, alongside Shina and the languages of Chitral and Kohistan, rather than to the Punjabi group that Pahari and Hindko belong to. Many basic words look familiar to an Urdu speaker because of a long history of Persian influence, but grammar and sound are quite different.

• Word order. Kashmiri puts the verb second in a sentence, as German does, where Urdu, Pahari and Hindko put it at the end.
• Sounds. It has a much larger set of vowels than Urdu, and many consonants change when a word is used in a different form, which is what gives it its distinctive sound.
• Little mutual understanding. An Urdu or Pahari speaker who has not grown up around Kashmiri will understand very little of a conversation, even though they will recognise words like shukriya or khuda hafiz.

Kashmiri literature: the poets worth knowing

Kashmiri has a written and oral literature reaching back more than six centuries, and many of its poems are still sung. Almost all of its major writers lived in the Kashmir Valley, but their verses are known among Kashmiri families on both sides of the Line of Control.

• Lal Ded (1320 to 1392). A mystic poet whose short four-line verses, called vakh, are among the earliest works in the language. People across Kashmir still quote them.
• Nund Rishi (1377 to 1440), also known as Sheikh Noor-ud-din Wali. A Sufi poet and founder of the Rishi order, whose verses are called shruk.
• Habba Khatoon (1554 to 1609). The queen of Yusuf Shah Chak, known as the "Nightingale of Kashmir" for her love songs, many of which are still sung.
• Mahmud Gami (1765 to 1855) and Rasul Mir (died 1870). Gami adapted Persian romances into Kashmiri, and Rasul Mir established the ghazal in the language.
• Mahjoor (1887 to 1952). Known as Shair-e-Kashmir, the poet of Kashmir, for his songs about the land and its people.
• Modern writers. Abdul Ahad Azad, Dina Nath Nadim, Amin Kamil and Rehman Rahi (1925 to 2023) shaped modern Kashmiri poetry, and Akhtar Mohiuddin wrote the first Kashmiri novel, Dod Dag, in 1957.

What script is Kashmiri written in?

Today Kashmiri is written mostly in a Perso-Arabic script, adapted from the Urdu alphabet with extra marks for its vowels. Older texts used the Sharada script, which takes its name from the same goddess of learning as Sharda Peeth, the ruined temple and centre of learning above Sharda in the Neelum Valley. Sharada is still used for religious purposes by Kashmiri Pandits, and some Pandit families also write Kashmiri in Devanagari.

Useful Kashmiri phrases

You will not need Kashmiri to travel, because everyone you deal with as a visitor also speaks Urdu. But in a Neelum or Leepa village, a greeting or a thank you in Kashmiri is noticed and appreciated, especially by older people. These are standard phrasebook forms; local pronunciation varies.

For everything practical, from rooms to jeep fares, our Urdu phrases for travellers is more useful.

Is it worth seeking out Kashmiri on a trip?

If you are interested in the region's culture, yes. Staying a night in a village in the upper Neelum Valley or in Leepa, rather than only driving through, is the most natural way to hear Kashmiri spoken at home, and it gives a sense of the links across the Line of Control that a day trip from Muzaffarabad does not. Our five-day Neelum Valley Escape spends three nights in the valley, at Keran, Sharda and Arang Kel.

If you want to study the language properly, Azad Kashmir is not the easiest place to do it, because teaching materials, books and media are produced mostly in the Kashmir Valley. For planning the trip itself, our travel guide covers documents, money and getting around.

Frequently asked questions