Brahui ( Urdu: براہوی ) or Brahvi ( براوی ) is a Dravidian language spoken by Brahui people of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, and expatriate communities in Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Iraq.

Brahui is spoken in the southwest region of Pakistan, as well as regions of Afghanistan and Iran which border Pakistan ; however, many members of the ethnic group no longer speak Brahui.

Brahui language is seen as a recent migrant language to its present region.

The main Iranian contributor to Brahui vocabulary, Balochi, is a Northwestern Iranian language, and moved to the area from the west only around 1000 AD.

However, a few scholars have hypothesised that Brahui is a remnant of a formerly widespread Dravidian language family that is believed to have been reduced or replaced during the influx of Iranian / Indo-Aryan languages upon their arrival in South Asia.

More recently, a Roman-based orthography named Brolikva which is short form of Brahui Roman Likvar has been developed by the Brahui Language Board of the University of Balochistan in Quetta.

The outer wall of Kalat. Kalat ( Brahui: Kalát, ) or Qalat is a historical town located in Kalat District, Balochistan, Pakistan.

The town of Kalat is said to have been founded by and named Qalat-e Sewa ( Sewa's Fort ), after Sewa, a legendary hero of the Brahui people.

It is the principal language of the Baloch of Balochistan It is also spoken as a second language by some Brahui.

The music of Balochistan province is very rich and full of varieties due to the many different types of languages which are spoken in the province, including Balochi, Pashto, Brahui, Persian and Saraiki.

The main Iranian contributor to Brahui vocabulary, Balochi, is a western Iranian language like Kurdish.

The ethnonym " Brahui " is a very old term and a purely Dravidian one.

One theory is that the Brahui are a relic population of Dravidians, surrounded by speakers of Indo-Iranian languages, remaining from a time when Dravidian was more widespread.

The main Iranian contributor to Brahui vocabulary is a northwestern Iranic language, Baluchi, and southeastern Iranic language, Pashto.

The Brahui language is a language within the Dravidian subgroup of languages.

Brahui is generally written in the Perso-Arabic script and there is even a Latin alphabet that has been developed for use with Brahui.

Scholars accept that Brahui could only have migrated to Balochistan from central India after 1000 AD.

The higher population figures for the Baloch may only be possible if a large number of " Baloch " are included who speak different languages like Saraiki, Sindhi, Punjabi and Brahui, and who often claim descent from Baloch ancestors.

However, the Taliban advanced on Nimruz only days later, and the Mujahideen under command of Abdul Karim Brahui ( later governor of Nimruz ) withdrew to Iran.

Moreover, it has now been demonstrated that the Brahui only migrated to Balochistan from central India after 1000 CE.

The fact that other Dravidian languages only exist further south in India has led to several speculations about the origins of the Brahui.

Brahui belongs, with Kurukh ( Oraon ) and Malto, to the northern subfamily of the Dravidian family of languages.

Only two Dravidian languages are exclusively spoken outside India, Brahui and Dhangar, a dialect of Kurukh.

The origins of the Brahui speaking tribes are uncertain, but their language indicates they are a northern Dravidian people, who may have migrated from central India circa 1000 AD, whose language has been modified by residence in the proximity of largely Iranian peoples, most notably the Baloch with whom the Brahui have been greatly mixed.

The distribution of living Dravidian languages, concentrated mostly in southern India but with isolated pockets in South Eastern Iran, Southern Afghanistan and Pakistan ( Brahui ) and in Central and East India ( Kurukh, Malto ), suggests to some a wider past distribution of the Dravidian languages.

However, northern Dravidian languages like Brahui, Kurukh and Malto have varied opinions about their origin.

Apart from the main South Indian languages of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Tulu, Brahui in Afghanistan is considered to belong to the Dravidian language family.

* Dravidian languages ( Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Brahui et al.

* Brahui and Dravidian Comparative Grammar ( 1962 )

Despite very few cultural differences from the Baloch, the Brahui are still regarded as a separate group on account of language difference.

– Brahui language

They culturally resemble their Baloch and Sindhi neighbors, although they still continue to speak their Brahui language.

* The Brahui language

# REDIRECT Brahui language

In Balochistan, there is also a Yusufzai clan of the Dehwar tribe in the Mastung District which speak Brahui, and Persian with some mixture of Brahui words.

The same tradition has existed of the Brahui.

There are three hypotheses regarding the Brahui that have been proposed by academics.

In his Beiträge zur Deutung der Eugubinischen Tafeln ( 1833 ) he prepared the way for the correct interpretation of the Umbrian inscriptions ; and the Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes ( 7 vols., 1837-1850 ), started and largely conducted by him, contains, among other valuable papers from his pen, grammatical sketches of the Beluchi and Brahui languages, and an essay on the Lycian inscriptions.

The others include Dari, Gujarati, Dawoodi Bohra, Memon, Marwari, Brahui, Makrani, Khowar, Burushaski, Arabic, Persian and Bengali.

The fourth article of the Constitution of Afghanistan states that citizens of Afghanistan include Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkmen, Aymaq, Arab, Baluch, Pashayi, Nuristani, Qezelbash, Gujjars and Brahui, who are native inhabitants of the country, and that all citizens of Afghanistan be called Afghans.

The absence of any older Iranian ( Avestan ) loanwords in Brahui supports this hypothesis.

The Brahui people arrived in the Qalat area nearly same time as the Balochi speaking tribes arrived from the west.

The Brahui Khans of Qalat were dominant from the 17th century onwards until the arrival of the British in the 19th century.

Mehrgarh ( Brahui: Mehrgaŕh, ), one of the most important Neolithic ( 7000 BCE to c. 2500 BCE ) sites in archaeology, lies on the " Kachi plain " of now Balochistan, Pakistan.