The Wakhi Alphabet

The Wakhi alphabet has 32 letters, all derived from the Perso-Arabic script shared with Dari and Urdu, the dominant written languages of the Wakhi-speaking regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan respectively. The 32 letters include the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet plus 4 letters unique to the Persian/Dari script: پ (pe, /p/), چ (che, /tʃ/), ژ (zhe, /ʒ/), and گ (gaf, /g/).

Short vowels are generally not written in everyday Wakhi text but can be indicated with optional diacritical marks called harakat. Wakhi has a rich vowel system inherited from Old Eastern Iranian, making harakat particularly important for accurately representing Wakhi pronunciation in linguistic documentation. Note that in Tajikistan, Wakhi is written in a Cyrillic-based script rather than Perso-Arabic; this page presents the Perso-Arabic script used in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Wakhi is an Eastern Iranian Pamiri language spoken by approximately 58,000–100,000 people across four countries: the Wakhan Corridor of northeastern Afghanistan, the Hunza-Gilgit region of northern Pakistan, parts of Tajikistan, and the Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County of Xinjiang, China. It is the most geographically widespread of all the Pamiri languages.

Wakhi belongs to the Eastern Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian language family. Within Eastern Iranian, it forms its own distinct Wakhi branch, separate from the Shughni-Yazghulami group (which includes Shughni, Bartangi, Sarikoli, and Yazgulami) and from the Munji-Yidgha subgroup. The Eastern Iranian family also includes Ossetic, Pashto, and the historically important Sogdian and Bactrian languages of Central Asia. Wakhi's distinct branch status within Eastern Iranian reflects its long history of isolated development in the high-altitude Wakhan region.

The most significant archaic feature of Wakhi is the /w/ pronunciation of و (vav) — directly inherited from Old Iranian *w — while surrounding Dari and Urdu use /v/ for this letter. This /w/ realisation (bilabial approximant, like English "w") is a major linguistic archaism shared with Yidgha and Munji (the Munji-Yidgha subgroup) and represents the conservative Eastern Iranian phonological character of all three languages. This feature links Wakhi to the archaic stage of Iranian before the shift from /w/ to /v/ in most Iranian languages.

Wakhi also preserves archaic Eastern Iranian vocabulary and morphological patterns that link it to Old Iranian texts, including features with parallels in Avestan and Old Persian. The Wakhan valley's geographic position as a crossroads of the Silk Road has also resulted in loanwords from Turkic, Chinese, and Indo-Aryan languages (particularly Burusho, Shina, and Balti in Pakistan) layered upon the Eastern Iranian core vocabulary. Wakhi's unique position as the sole member of its own branch within Eastern Iranian makes it a critical language for reconstructing Proto-Eastern-Iranian and understanding the diversification of the Iranian language family.

Wakhi is spoken across four countries in the high mountain regions of Central and South Asia. In Afghanistan, Wakhi is spoken in the Wakhan Corridor — the narrow panhandle of northeastern Afghanistan stretching between Tajikistan and Pakistan. In Pakistan, Wakhi is spoken in the Hunza-Gilgit region of Gilgit-Baltistan, particularly in the upper Hunza Valley (Gojal). In Tajikistan, Wakhi is spoken in the Wakhan area of Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast. In China, Wakhi is spoken in the Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County of Xinjiang.

The geographic distribution of Wakhi across four countries reflects the historic extent of the Wakhan kingdom — an ancient polity centred on the Wakhan Corridor that served as a key junction of the Silk Road. The modern political borders imposed by the Great Game rivalries of the 19th century divided the Wakhi-speaking population across different nation-states. Despite this fragmentation, Wakhi communities have maintained the language as a marker of cultural identity in their respective mountain homelands. Pakistan hosts the largest accessible Wakhi-speaking community, with a well-documented oral and literary tradition centred on the Hunza valley.

Wakhi, Shughni, and Munji are all Eastern Iranian Pamiri languages but they belong to distinct subgroups within the Eastern Iranian branch. Wakhi forms its own independent Wakhi branch. Shughni belongs to the Shughni-Yazghulami group (alongside Bartangi, Sarikoli, and Yazgulami). Munji belongs to the Munji-Yidgha subgroup (alongside Yidgha of Chitral). Despite being geographic neighbours in the Pamirs and Hindu Kush, these languages are not mutually intelligible and have followed distinct evolutionary paths within Eastern Iranian.

A key shared feature between Wakhi and Munji-Yidgha is the preservation of the archaic /w/ pronunciation of و — contrasting with the /v/ of Shughni, Dari, and Urdu. This phonological archaism reflects a common Eastern Iranian heritage. However, Wakhi and Munji-Yidgha are not each other's closest relatives — Wakhi forms its own branch, while Munji and Yidgha are closer to each other than either is to Wakhi. The distinction of three separate Eastern Iranian branches (Wakhi, Shughni-Yazghulami, and Munji-Yidgha) in the Pamir region testifies to the linguistic diversity and ancient settlement history of the Pamir mountain communities.

Yes, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Like all Perso-Arabic scripts, the Wakhi Perso-Arabic alphabet is written and read from right to left. Each letter connects to adjacent letters within a word (cursive), and most letters change shape depending on their position — initial, medial, final, or isolated form. The script belongs to the Arabic Unicode Block (U+0600–U+06FF) and follows the Dari/Afghan and Urdu/Pakistani orthographic conventions of the Wakhi-speaking communities in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In Tajikistan, Wakhi is written in a Cyrillic-based script (left to right), which was introduced during the Soviet period. This means Wakhi has two distinct writing systems in use across its speaker communities depending on country. In China, Wakhi speakers typically use Uyghur Arabic script or Chinese for formal writing. The Perso-Arabic script presented on this page represents the tradition used in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the largest accessible Wakhi communities are documented and where Wakhi literature and oral poetry are most actively recorded.