Kashmiri Language (Koshur) by Ahanger HOBO

Kashmiri has a very large phoneme inventory: 32 vowels and 62 consonants, giving that vowel nasalization and consonant palatalization are phonemic and not phonetic

Mixture of Aryan and Naga script gave rise to Sharda script which in course of time changed into Sanskrit with a mixture of Dardic and later on the Persian script. The researcher Sir George Gierson emphasizes that Kashmiri language belongs to the Dardic and not to the Sanskrit group though Sanskrit has considerably  influenced Kashmiri language, hefinds more affinity of Pushtu language as well with Kashmiri and specifies the language being called as ‘koshur’ and not Kashmiri by the inhabitants. Written left to right direction like urdu and has alphabets similar to the Urdu language. Spoken mainly in Kashmir valley and also in Doda, Kishtwar and Baderwah areas of Jammu region. The dialect of the Kashmiri language changes in different regions, towns and villages, in vocabulary and pronunciation.