Kashmir is witnessing a visible shift how its young ones speak.
Dr. Ashraf Zainabi
Before Kashmir becomes English-mir metaphorically, before the present vulnerable status of Koshur changes to critically endangered and then toan extinct one, we must do something critically urgent. Andif Koshur disappears; will Kashmir still be Kashmir in the fullest cultural sense of the word?
One important thing we must do is to talk to our kids aged one year and abovein Kashmiri only and even force them to talk in Kashmiri only, everywhere, in homes, schools, social gatherings, outings etc. Because it is them only who can keep Koshur alive, and after them their children, and after them their children and so on. God forbid if Koshur misses it speakers for two and at maximum three generations, it may go extinct. Our kids can and must learn as many other languages as possible but never ever on the cost of Koshur. Let Koshur be their first and non-negotiable language.
2025 to 3025 will be the century that may decide the fate of Koshur. The journey of about 2,000-year-old language toward silence is in progress at present. And when languages get silent, they ultimately die. But a language does not die when its oldest speaker dies.It dies when its youngest speaker stops speaking it.That is perhaps the most unsettling truth surrounding the Kashmiri language today.
Across many homes in Kashmir in 2026, a strange silence is quietly growing. Children understand Kashmiri but reply in Urdu, Hindi, or English. Parents proudly enroll their children in English-medium schools yet rarely insist on speaking Kashmiri at home. Schools hardly create spaces where speaking Kashmiri feels aspirational, intellectual, or modern. Even among young people who know the language, many consciously avoid speaking it publicly. Linguistically, this is not a small cultural shift. It is a warning sign.
According to UNESCO, Kashmiri is currently classified as a vulnerable language in the Atlas of the world’s languages in danger. A vulnerable language is one that children still speak, but increasingly only within restricted domains such as the home. This classification may sound mild. But it is not.In linguistic history, many languages began exactly here, spoken emotionally, domestically, ceremonially, before slowly collapsing across generations. Humanity has already witnessed this tragedy thousands of times.
Of the nearly 7,000 languages spoken today, UNESCO warns that almost half may disappear before the end of this century. More than 200 languages have vanished in just the last few generations alone.Every disappearing language takes with it something far larger than grammar or vocabulary. It takes away memory, worldview, ecological wisdom, humor, folklore, oral history, songs, metaphors, spirituality, and ways of understanding reality itself. That is why language extinction is not merely linguistic loss. It is civilizational erosion.
India itself stands on this fragile edge. More than 190 Indian languages are endangered in varying degrees. Some are vulnerable. Some are definitely endangered. Some are severely endangered. Others are critically endangered, surviving only among elderly speakers. Languages like Bo in the Andaman Islands have already gone extinct.
The stages are now globally recognized.A language first becomes vulnerable, where children still speak it but less confidently. Then comes definitely endangered, where children no longer learn it naturally at home. After that comes severely endangered, where only grandparents speak it fluently. Then critically endangered, where the last speakers use it rarely and partially. Finally comes extinction.
The frightening part is this, languages usually do not collapse dramatically. They disappear politely. First, they leave schools. Then they leave offices. Then they leave books. Then they leave the imagination of children.Eventually, they survive only in songs played during weddings and in the fading memories of grandparents. Kashmiriis not an ordinary regional language passing through temporary difficulty. It is one of the oldest surviving voices of the Himalayas, carrying nearly two thousand years of cultural evolution. Linguists place it within the Dardic branch of the Indo-Aryan language family.
“Language isn’t just a tool for communication; it’s a civilization’s operating system. Change the code, and you rewrite how a society thinks, loves, and imagines itself.”
Long before English entered Kashmir, long before Urdu became dominant, Kashmiri had already produced profound traditions of poetry, mysticism, and philosophy through figures such as Lal Ded, Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Wali, Habba Khatoon, Rasul Mir, Mahjoor, Dina Nath Nadim, and Rahman Rahi.
Kashmiri survived Sanskritic influence. It absorbed Persian elegantly. Arabic enriched its spiritual vocabulary. Urdu shaped administrative culture. English arrived with modernity. Yet the language endured because ordinary people continued speaking it naturally.Its real universities were homes, shrines, villages, lullabies, wanwun, folk songs, and oral storytelling traditions.
The modern decline began slowly.The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries changed Kashmir’s linguistic structure profoundly. Persian lost administrative importance. Urdu became the language of governance and literacy. Later, English emerged as the language of prestige, employment, and upward mobility.Gradually, a dangerous social message entered society, serious people speak other languages.This is how most languages decline globally, not through formal bans but through changing aspirations.
Parents begin believing their children will succeed only if they distance themselves from the mother tongue. Schools reinforce this belief. Markets reward it. Media amplifies it. Technology accelerates it. Today, children understand the ancestral language but stop speaking it confidently. Then comes a generation that speaks it imperfectly. After that comes silence. Kashmir today appears dangerously close to the second stage.
One increasingly observes children below fifteen speaking fragmented Kashmiri mixed heavily with Urdu, Hindi, and English vocabulary. Many urban children cannot form long conversations fluently in Kashmiri. Some even hesitate to speak it publicly because they fear appearing less modern.This is perhaps the most tragic aspect of linguistic decline, when speakers begin feeling embarrassed by their own mother tongue.No government policy can save a language once shame enters it.
Millions still speak Kashmiri today. Rural Kashmir remains comparatively stronger linguistically than urban areas. Elder generations continue carrying deep fluency. Emotionally, the language still breathes.But emotional survival alone is insufficient.Many languages remain emotionally loved while functionally dying.
A language may continue existing statistically while shrinking intellectually. It becomes restricted to informal conversation but disappears from science, administration, literature, academia, technology, and serious public discourse. That stage is called functional decline.
The world has seen this repeatedly. The Ubykh language once spoken around the Black Sea disappeared in 1992 with the death of its last fluent speaker. Aboriginal languages in Australia collapsed under pressures of assimilation and modernization. Numerous Native American languages disappeared within two or three generations after children stopped learning them naturally. Sophia Smith Galer recently wrote, that disappearing languages take away culture, tradition and ways of understanding. That observation carries profound relevance for Kashmir. Because Kashmiri is not merely vocabulary. It is Kashmir’s emotional architecture.
Tailpiece: In that sense, the metaphor English-mir is intellectually meaningful. Because a language shapes, how a society thinks, remembers, jokes, mourns, loves, worships, and imagines itself. When the language changes fully, the civilization gradually changes with it.
(The author is a teacher and a researcher based in Gowhar Pora Chadoora of Central Kashmir’s Budgam district. The views, opinions and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the author and aren’t necessarily in accord with the views of “Kashmir Horizon”)
