Torwali English Urdu Dictionary
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Torwali English Urdu Dictionary
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  • Please provide some background information about this language. Where is it spoken? What communities speak this language? Is this language endangered?
  • What are the names of the people who built this dictionary? Whose voices are in this dictionary?
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About Torwali language 

According to Ethnologue (Hess, 2016) there are about 7,097 languages currently spoken in the world. Linguists estimate that 2,464 languages are endangered, 24 languages dominate that are spoken by one-half of the world’s population (Salsburg Global Seminar, 2017).

One of the 27 highly endangered languages of Pakistan listed in the same atlas is the language called Torwali. Owing to the lack of a written tradition and has fast “language shift” towards the predominant language Pashto in the areas of Bahrain and Chail valleys in Swat, is rated definitely endangered.

Torwali is a Dardic language of the Indo-Aryan family mainly spoken in the Bahrain and Chail areas of District Swat in Northern Pakistan. The level of its endangerment can also be assessed by its small community of speakers which is approximately 80,000 (Lunsford, 2001). A recent survey by Idara Baraye Taleem wa Taraqi (IBT), however, found that 60 % of the Torwali respondents estimate the Torwali population as more than 120,000 (Respondents, 2014). Close to half its speakers have migrated permanently to the bigger cities of Pakistan where their language is either being replaced by the national language Urdu, or by other languages of wider communication such as Pashto or Punjabi. 

The language Torwali is said to have originated from the pre-Muslim Dardic communities of Pakistan (Alian & Inam-ur-Rahim, 2002). The community speaking this language is called Torwalik or Torwal (Grierson, 1929). Like other Dardic communities, the Torwalik have no idea of their origin, most of them relate themselves to either Arabs or Pashtuns. This can be due to the fact that very little research has been done on the history of the Dardic people in Pakistan. 

In the Torwali folklore we find that the area where the Torwali community lives was referred to as Tuuaal, translated in other language as Torwal. For instance, these couplets:

Tuuaal Shid Hu Maasho Aa Khae Buraee Ingolaa

Mherey Shaa Ye Theli Hey Mhee Shereen Lupataa (Gul, 2017)

(Auntie, now how can I hide my love as it was revealed to the entire Torwal 

Now let me put it on my head, as it (love) is now my sweet shawl)

Du Zar Tuuaal Hui Shid Egee Saidu Si Baachaa

Thaamu Jaen Chee Nee Hi Yee Dhereena Wa Panaa. (Torwali, 2017)

(Two thousand  i.e. entire people of Torwal were informed along with the King of Saidu

Still she is alive; not hidden (buried) in the earth (because of shame))

More about the language and work on please refer to this website: https://ibtnorthpakistan.org/ 

About this dictionary 

This dictionary is of the Torwali language spoken by about 130,000 people in the valleys of Bahrain and Madyan in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. A local organization Idara Baraye Taleem wa Taraqi (IBT) i.e. institute for education and development, undertook the task of documenting and revitalizing this language by making common its use in various domains such as education, social gatherings, schools and in digital media. This dictionary is an online talking version of the Torwali-Urdu-English dictionary compiled by Aftab Ahmad with the assistance of other team members at IBT and under the supervision of Zubair Torwali in a period of 10 months in the year of 2015. That dictionary was published by IBT in hard form but since then the organization IBT felt the need of having an electronic "talking" version of this dictionary. This dictionary has more than 10,000 Torwali words with Urdu and English translations and each word is supported by an example sentence. This dictionary here is a better and added version of that hard version of the dictionary managed and added by Zubair Torwali and Aftab Ahmad. Dictionary data created by Torwali and Ahmad was uploaded to the platform by the Living Tongues team.