The Dumaki Alphabet

Dumaki (ISO 639-3: dmu) is a critically endangered Indo-Aryan language spoken by approximately 500 people in the Hunza valley of Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. It is one of the most endangered languages of South Asia, spoken by the Dom community — historically itinerant musicians and craftspeople — in the dramatic mountain landscape of the Hunza-Karakoram region, one of the most linguistically diverse valleys on Earth.

The Hunza valley is also home to speakers of Burusho (a language isolate), Shina (a Dardic Indo-Aryan language), and Wakhi (an Eastern Iranian language). Dumaki exists as a minority language within this diverse multilingual context. Younger generations of the Dom community in Hunza have largely shifted to Burusho, Shina, and Urdu, making Dumaki one of the most urgently documented endangered languages in South Asian linguistics.

Dumaki and Domaaki are closely related sister languages — both belong to the same Indo-Aryan Dardic subgroup and were historically spoken by Dom communities in adjacent mountain valleys of Gilgit-Baltistan. Dumaki is spoken in the Hunza valley (ISO 639-3: dmu), while Domaaki is spoken in and around Gilgit town (ISO 639-3: dmk). The two languages are sometimes treated as dialects of a single language, but most linguists classify them as distinct languages given significant differences in vocabulary and phonology.

The differences between Dumaki and Domaaki reflect centuries of contact with different neighbouring languages. Dumaki has been more heavily influenced by Burusho (the dominant language of Hunza valley) and Wakhi (spoken in the upper Hunza valley), while Domaaki has been more influenced by Shina and Khowar, the dominant languages around Gilgit town. Both languages retain an archaic Indo-Aryan grammatical framework while showing extensive contact-induced changes in vocabulary and phonology.

The Dumaki alphabet has 32 letters, all derived from the Perso-Arabic script shared with Urdu, Pakistan's national language. The 32 letters include the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet plus 4 letters unique to the Urdu/Persian script: پ (pe, /p/), چ (che, /tʃ/), ژ (zhe, /ʒ/), and گ (gaf, /g/).

Short vowels are generally not written in everyday Dumaki text but can be indicated with optional diacritical marks called harakat (zabar, zer, pesh in Urdu). As a critically endangered language with very few remaining fluent speakers, written Dumaki materials are primarily found in linguistic research publications. Harakat are particularly important in Dumaki documentation to accurately capture the phonological distinctions of this endangered language for future reference.

Yes. Dumaki is written using the Perso-Arabic script, which is written and read from right to left. The script is cursive — each letter connects to adjacent letters — and most letters change shape depending on their position in the word (initial, medial, final, or isolated form). The script follows the Unicode Arabic Block (U+0600–U+06FF) using the standard Urdu orthographic convention of Pakistan.

Numerals are written left to right within otherwise right-to-left text. Dumaki uses the Eastern Arabic-Indic digits (۰–۹) standard in Urdu and across Pakistani written materials. Given the small size of the Dumaki speaker community and the dominance of Burusho, Shina, and Urdu in the Hunza valley, written Dumaki is rare, appearing primarily in academic linguistic documentation rather than everyday use.

The Hunza valley is located in the northern part of Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, in the Karakoram mountain range. It is known internationally for its dramatic landscape including Rakaposhi, Ultar Sar, and other peaks above 7,000 metres. The main town, Karimabad (formerly known as Baltit), was historically the seat of the Hunza State, ruled by the Mir of Hunza until 1974 when it was incorporated into Pakistan.

The linguistic diversity of Hunza valley is extraordinary. Burusho (Burushaski) is the primary language and a language isolate — meaning it is unrelated to any other known language family in the world. Shina is also widely spoken, as is Wakhi in the upper valley (Gojal region). Urdu serves as the language of education, administration, and inter-community communication. And Dumaki — the language of the Dom community — represents the most endangered language of this linguistically extraordinary valley.

Dumaki is critically endangered for several interconnected reasons. The speaker community is extremely small — estimated at around 500 speakers — and predominantly elderly. Younger members of the Dom community in Hunza have largely shifted to Burusho, the dominant and prestigious language of the valley, or to Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, for all formal and many informal purposes.

The Dom community's traditional occupations as itinerant musicians and craftspeople have also been disrupted by modern economic changes, removing a key social context in which Dumaki was used. There is limited intergenerational transmission of the language, and there are no established educational materials in Dumaki or formal language programmes to support its revitalisation. Linguistic documentation projects have been the primary means of preserving knowledge of Dumaki grammar and vocabulary, making the work of fieldwork linguists critically important for this endangered language of the Hunza valley.