0:00:00.000,0:00:06.000 Hello! My name is Aakriti Khaibri. I live in Delhi, am 24 years old. 0:00:07.000,0:00:10.000 I originally hail from Jammu, born into a Kashmiri family. 0:00:11.000,0:00:17.000 My mother tongue is Kashmiri. I would be briefing on that in the next coupled of minutes. 0:00:18.000,0:00:25.000 Kashmiri language has almost 56 lac speakers, over 56 actually. 0:00:26.000,0:00:40.000 And It is influenced by Dard, Persian, and Sanskrit languages, this can be well observed from Kashmiri. 0:00:41.000,0:00:45.000 Place and religion play a role too. 0:00:46.000,0:00:50.000 Take the Hindustani word, 'paani' (water), for example. 0:00:51.000,0:00:55.000 Kashmiri Muslims would call it 'aab', 'aab' being a Persian word. 0:00:56.000,0:01:02.000 While Kashmiri Hindus call it 'poen', both 'paani' and 'poen' being similar sounding. 0:01:03.000,0:01:07.000 Kashmiri is way different than the Hindustani language 0:01:08.000,0:01:14.000 It is written in Nastaliq (Urdu) and Sharda scripts. 0:01:15.000,0:01:20.000 Sharda is unfortunately not used as much. 0:01:21.000,0:01:27.000 We generally use Devanagri for writing Kashmiri. 0:01:28.000,0:01:31.000 Our Kashmiri Calendar (also called 'necshpatir' / 'janthri') 0:01:32.000,0:01:39.000 has been written in Devanagri - the latest one. 0:01:40.000,0:01:54.000 I feel we should work towards preserving our older languages, scripts, cultures. 0:01:55.000,0:02:06.000 And educate the younger generations about our culture and values. Thank you!