| Badeshi | |
| Speakers: | 3 |
| States: | Pakistan |
| Region: | Bishigram Valley, Chail |
| Familycolor: | Indo-European |
| Fam2: | Indo-Iranian |
| Fam3: | (unclassified) |
| Script: | Arabic script,[1] words also transcribed in Latin script |
| Iso3: | bdz |
| Glotto: | bade1240 |
| Glottorefname: | Badeshi |
| Ethnicity: | Badeshi people |
| Date: | 2018 |
Badeshi is an unclassified Indo-Iranian language spoken in northern Pakistan.[2] The language is critically endangered and considered at risk of extinction. In 2018, the BBC found three men who could still speak the language.
Muhammad Zaman Sagar, a field linguist connected to the Forum for Language Initiative, has worked on this language. But as a result of his research during two years, he collected only about one hundred words. In July 2007, he visited the Bishigram Valley again and spent some days with the people there. There are efforts to retain a record of the language by linguist Zubair Torwali among others.[3]
In 2018, BBC reporters found three old men (Said Gul, Ali Sher and Rahim Gul) who could still speak Badeshi in the Bishigram Valley in Northern Pakistan.[4] They claimed that the language had initially been spoken by "nine or ten families" in their village, but that the Torwali language had taken over. The men had also worked in tourist areas in the Swat Valley, where they spoke Pashto. Some phrases of Badeshi were: