The Yidgha language (یدغا زڤون) is an Eastern Iranian language of the Pamir group spoken in the upper Lotkoh Valley (Tehsil Lotkoh) of Chitral in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Yidgha is similar to the Munji language spoken on the Afghan side of the border.

The Garam Chashma area became important during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan because the Soviets were unable to stop the flow of arms and men back and forth across the Dorah Pass that separates Chitral from Badakshan in Afghanistan. Almost the entire Munji-speaking population of Afghanistan fled across the border to Chitral during the War in Afghanistan.

According to Georg Morgenstierne (1931), the name Yidgha probably derives from *(h)ind(a,i)-ka-, likely referring to the part of the Munji tribe that settled on the "Indian" or "Indo-Aryan" side near the Lotkoh Valley.^[2] Ľubomír Novák (2013) revises the reconstruction as *hindū̆-ka-ka-, with the same assumption.^[3]

Yidgha uses the Arabic script. The Yidgha alphabet has 45 letters and is based on the Urdu alphabet. Retroflexes that don't exist in Urdu have been borrowed from the Khowar alphabet. The Yidgha alphabet is unusual among Pakistani alphabets as it places the letters ٹ after ث and ڈ after ذ, unlike in Urdu. Alveolar affricate letters ts and dz were borrowed from the Pashto alphabet. It also places the letter ڤ after ق.

Yidgha language has 8 vowels: A a (/a/), Ā ā (/aː/), I i (/i/), Ī (/iː/), U u (/u/), Ū ū (/uː/), E e (/eː/) and O o (/oː/). The rules for writing vowels are same as in the Urdu alphabet, short vowels at the end of word are written with the 3 vowel diacritics followed by ہ, and the combinations of Zabar + ye (َی) and zabar + wāw (َو) are read as /aj/ and /aw/ and not as single vowels like in Urdu.

The Yidgha language has not been given serious study by linguists, except that it is mentioned by Georg Morgenstierne (1926), Kendall Decker (1992) and Badshah Munir Bukhari (2005). A 280-page joint description of Yidgha and Munji (descriptive and historical phonetics and grammar, glossary with etymologies where possible) is given by Morgenstierne (1938).

Norwegian linguist Georg Morgenstierne wrote that Chitral is the area of the greatest linguistic diversity in the world.[1] Although Khowar is the predominant language of Chitral, more than ten other languages are spoken here. These include Kalasha-mun, Palula, Dameli, Gawar-Bati, Nuristani, Yidgha, Burushaski, Wakhi, Kyrgyz, the Madaglashti dialect of Persian, and Pashto. Since many of these languages have no written form, letters are usually written in Urdu, a modified script adapted from Persian.

• Languages of Pakistan

• Decker, Kendall D. (1992). Languages of Chitral. ISBN 969-8023-15-1.
• Morgenstierne, Georg (1926) Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan. Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, Serie C I-2. Oslo. ISBN 0-923891-09-9
• Morgenstierne, Georg (1931). "The Name Munjān and Some Other Names of Places and Peoples in the Hindu Kush". Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London. 6 (2): 439–444. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00092934. JSTOR 607674.
• Morgenstierne, Georg (1938) Indo-Iranian Frontier Languages II (Yidgha-Munji, Sanglechi-Ishkashmi and Wakhi). Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, Serie B: XXXV. Oslo.
• Novák, Ľubomír (2013). Problem of Archaism and Innovation in the Eastern Iranian Languages (Thesis). Charles University. Retrieved 14 November 2023.