Kohistani Shina is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the former Kohistan District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northern Pakistan. According to Ethnologue, Kohistani Shina is mutually intelligible with the Shina variety of Chilas, but not with the standard dialect of Gilgit.^[1] Bateri and Kalkoti speakers speak Kohistani Shina as a second language.^[3] Indus Kohistani loanwords can be found in the language.^{[citation needed]} A grammar and a dictionary of the language have been published.^[4][5][6]

Shina is one of the few Dardic languages with a written tradition.^[7] However, it was an unwritten language until a few decades ago.^[8] Only in late 2010s has Shina orthography been standardized and primers as well as dictionaries have been published. ^[9][5]

Since the first attempts at accurately representing Shina's phonology in the 1960s there have been several proposed orthographies for the different varieties of the language, with debates centering on how to write several retroflex sound not present in Urdu and whether vowel length and tone should be represented.^[10]

There are two main orthographic conventions now, one in Pakistani-controlled areas of Gilgit-Baltistan and in Kohistan, and the other in Indian-controlled area of Dras, Ladakh.

Below alphabet has been standardized, documented, and popularized thanks to efforts of literaturists such as Professor Muhammad Amin Ziya, Shakeel Ahmad Shakeel, and Razwal Kohistani, and it has been developed for all Shina language dialects, including Gilgit dialect and Kohistani dialect, which ^[9][5][11] The Kohistani Shina alphabet differs slightly from the Gilgiti variety. For example, it includes one additional letter ڦ, and it includes several additional digraphs to represent additional aspirated consonants unique to Kohistani. Furthermore, variations and personal preferences can be observed across Shina documents. For example, it is common to see someone use سً instead of ݜ for [ʂ], or use sukun ◌ْ (U+0652) instead of small sideway noon ◌ࣿ (U+08FF) to indicate short vowels. However, these variations are no longer an issue. Another issue is that of how to write loanwords that use letters not found in Shina language, for example letters "س / ث / ص", which all sound like [s] in Shina. Some documents preserve the original spelling, despite the letters being homophones and not having any independent sound of their own, similar to orthographic conventions of Persian and Urdu. Whereas other documents prefer to rewrite all loanwords in a single Shina letter, and thus simplify the writing, similar to orthographic conventions of Kurdish and Uyghur.

Shina vowels are distinguished by length, by whether or not they're nasalized, and by tone. Nasalization is represented like other Perso-Arabic alphabets in Pakistan, with Nun Ghunna (ن٘ـ / ـن٘ـ / ں). In Shina, tone variation only occur when there is a long vowel. There are conventions unique to Shina to show the three tones. In Shina conventions, specific diacritics are shown in conjunction with the letters aliv, waaw, buṛi ye, and ye (ا، و، یـ، ی، ے), as these letters are written down to represent long vowels. The diacritics inverted damma ◌ٗ (U+0657) and superscript alef ◌ٰ (U+0670) represent a rising tone and a falling tone respectively. Another diacritic, a small sideway noon ◌ࣿ (U+08FF) is used to represent short vowels when need be.^[12]