Dameli is spoken in several isolated villages in a side valley called Damel, on the east side of the Chitral River, a few miles below Mirkhani in Arandu Tehsil, Chitral. Dameli has been substantially influenced by neighboring languages, and is threatened by the larger surrounding language communities as well as Urdu, the national language. However, though Dameli speakers will default to other languages in groups that include people from other language communities, they still use Dameli to communicate at home, with family and Dameli-speaking friends, in community and religious gatherings, and informally in schools with other students and teachers who also speak Dameli.

The Dameli people are mostly farmers and goat herders, with grapes being the only known crop exported to other communities. However, the community youth migrate to the urban areas of the country for earning their livelihood, and many are found working in the food industry especially in Peshawar and Karachi.  There are no census figures to determine the exact number of the people in each language community, as the valley has a diverse population so the latest information available is from the research done in the area around 2010, at which time there were an estimated 5000 Dameli speakers. The researcher, Asmat Dameli who was part of FLI’s intervention, estimates that the latest number of Dameli speakers could be around 6000. He said that Dameli speakers have developed a tendency to migrate to the major cities for employment but never settle there permanently. He revealed that more than 100 people settled in Bumburet, the Kalash village, not far away from Damel valley in Chitral some eighty years ago, and many of them still speak their language.

The language has a functional writing system which was developed by some trained Dameli speakers in 2016 under a preliminary documentation project FLI implemented. Afterward, these researchers started bringing up publications in their native language and so far, five books on various topics have been published. They also record their folktales, translate them into widely known languages and publish them. Dameli speakers have also activated themselves on social media and are promoting their mother tongue.