It is spoken in the village of Sau, on the east bank of the Kunar River, around 20 kilometres (12 mi) south of the town of Arandu, which is on the border with Pakistan's Chitral region.

[6] Sawi speakers consider themselves part of the Gawar ethnic group, which is found in half a dozen of the surrounding villages and whose language is Gawarbati.

[7] During the long period of unrest, the population of the village was displaced into refugee camps in Chitral and Dir, but reportedly many people have now returned to Afghanistan.

[8] Henrik Liljegren's study of the shared linguistic features and the local oral traditions suggest that the ancestors of these language communities are likely to have migrated from the present-day Diamer District on the Indus River.

The presence of weak voiced aspirates (bh, dh, gh) was cautiously reported by Buddruss in 1967,[10] but Liljegren (2009, p. 31) found them to be absent from the speech of his consultant(s).