Pashayi or Pashai (sometimes referred to colloquially in neighbouring languages as "Shari") is a group of languages spoken by the Pashai people in parts of Kapisa, Laghman, Nuristan, Kunar, and Nangarhar Provinces in Northeastern Afghanistan. It belongs to the Dardic branch of the Indo-Aryan languages. Most speakers are bilingual in Pashto with a literacy rate of about 25%, with the Pashayi languages having no written form prior to 2003. There are four mutually unintelligible varieties, with only about a 30% lexical similarity: