Shughni

Shughni, also spelled Shugni, is an Iranian language of the Pamir group within the Eastern Iranian branch. It is spoken by the Shughni people in Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region and in Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan. Estimates place the number of speakers in the tens of thousands; the language remains strong in some villages but is under pressure from Tajik and Dari in education and media.

The language has several regional varieties and is closely related to other Pamir languages such as Ishkashimi and Wakhi; classifications differ on the precise subgrouping. There is no single standard written form; historically it has been transmitted orally. In modern usage, Cyrillic-based scripts are common in Tajikistan, while Perso-Arabic scripts have been used in Afghanistan; literacy materials and education vary by locale.

Shughni exhibits features typical of Iranian languages, including an inventory of consonants with ejectives and a predominantly subject–object–verb word order. It uses suffixal morphology to express grammatical relations and possession, and it forms a number of derivational and inflectional forms through affixation. Like many minority languages in the region, Shughni faces language endangerment pressures as younger speakers shift toward Tajik or Dari in schooling and media.