This book reflects on a quarter-century of observations by Charles Kieffer (Research Director CNRS, Paris) during his dialectological research from 1957-1981 in all of Afghanistan, sometimes under very adventurous circumstances. As a contributor to the “Linguistic Atlas of Afghanistan” under the direction of the late Prof. Georges Redard (University of Bern), he has also collected material about the private life and the intimate vocabulary of the people living in the countryside. Dealing with the oral folk culture, where the people are, in part, illiterate and deeply influenced by Islam, gave the author the opportunity to bring to light some taboos, prohibitions on speech, and language obligations still well noticeable in everyday life.