Xuǧnoni
Shughni
- Global speakers: 95,000
- Glottocode: shug1248
- ISO 639-3: sgh
With approximately 95,000 speakers, Shughni (locally known as "Pamiri") is the largest of the minority languages spoken in the Pamir mountains, sometimes serving as a lingua franca between different groups and heard in the regional center of Khorog. There may be as many as 300 Pamiris in New York, of whom the majority, maybe 200 and growing, are speakers of Shughni, living especially in Brooklyn (Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge) and Queens (Rego Park/Woodhaven Boulevard area). Small numbers speak Rushani, Bartangi, Wakhi, and Ishkashimi. The first Pamiris arrived around 30 years ago, around the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, while others came to escape the destruction of the Tajik Civil War during the 1990s. Larger migrant communities can be found in such cities as Dushanbe (capital of Tajikistan) and Moscow, but New York represents the largest Pamiri center in the U.S.
Sites
NYC neighborhoods or towns in the metro region where the language community has a significant site, marked by a point on the map: