Lahnda () () also known as Lahndi or Western Punjabi, is a group of north-western Indo-Aryan language varieties spoken in parts of Pakistan and India. Its validity as a genetic grouping is not certain. Terms like ''Lahnda'' or ''Western Punjabi'' are exonyms employed by linguists, and are not used by the speakers themselves. Lahnda includes the following languages: Saraiki (spoken mostly in southern

Pakistani Punjab Punjab (; , ) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in central-eastern region of the country, Punjab is the second-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the largest province by population. It shares land borders with the ...

by about 26 million people), the diverse varieties of

Hindko Hindko (, romanized: , ) is a cover term for a diverse group of Lahnda dialects spoken by several million people of various ethnic backgrounds in several areas in northwestern Pakistan, primarily in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Pun ...

(with almost five million speakers in north-western Punjab and neighbouring regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, especially

Hazara Hazara may refer to: Ethnic groups * The Hazaras, a Persian-speaking people of Afghanistan and Pakistan * Aimaq Hazara, Aimaq's subtribe of Hazara origin * Hazarawals, a Hindko-speaking people of the Hazara region of northern Pakistan * Hazar ...

), Pahari/Pothwari (3.5 million speakers in north-central Punjab,

Azad Kashmir Azad Jammu and Kashmir (; ), abbreviated as AJK and colloquially referred to as simply Azad Kashmir, is a region administered by Pakistan as a nominally self-governing entitySee: * * * and constituting the western portion of the larger Ka ...

and parts of Indian

Jammu and Kashmir Jammu and Kashmir may refer to: * Kashmir, the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent * Jammu and Kashmir (union territory), a region administered by India as a union territory * Jammu and Kashmir (state), a region administered ...

Khetrani Khetrānī, or Khetranki, is an Indo-Aryan language of north-eastern Balochistan. It is spoken by the majority of the Khetrans, a Baloch tribe that occupies a hilly tract in the Sulaiman Mountains comprising the whole of Barkhan District as well ...

(20,000 speakers in Balochistan), and Inku (a possibly extinct language of Afghanistan). The languages encyclopedia ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

'' also subsumes under Lahnda a group of varieties that it labels as "Western Punjabi" ( ISO 639-3 code: ''pnb'') – the Majhi dialects transitional between Lahnda and Eastern Punjabi; these are spoken by about 66 million people.

Name

''Lahnda'' means "western" in Punjabi. It was coined by

William St. Clair Tisdall William St. Clair Tisdall (1859–1928) was a British Anglican priest, linguist, historian and philologist who served as the Secretary of the Church of England's Missionary Society in Isfahan, Persia. Career Tisdall was the principal at the Tr ...

(in the form ''Lahindā'') probably around 1890 and later adopted by a number of linguists — notably

George Abraham Grierson Sir George Abraham Grierson (7 January 1851 – 9 March 1941) was an Irish administrator and linguist in British India. He worked in the Indian Civil Service but an interest in philology and linguistics led him to pursue studies in the languag ...

— for a dialect group that had no general local name. This term has currency only among linguists.

Development

Saraiki and Hindko have been cultivated as literary languages. The development of the standard written Saraiki began in the 1960s. The national census of Pakistan has counted Saraiki and Hindko speakers since 1981.

Classification

Lahnda has several traits that distinguish it from Punjabi, such as a future tense in ''-s-''. Like Sindhi, Siraiki retains breathy-voiced consonants, has developed implosives, and lacks tone. Hindko, also called ''Panjistani'' or (ambiguously) ''Pahari'', is more like Punjabi in this regard, though the equivalent of the low-rising tone of Punjabi is a high-falling tone in Peshawar Hindko. Sindhi, Lahnda and Punjabi form a dialect continuum with no clear-cut boundaries. ''

'' classifies the western dialects of Punjabi as Lahnda, so that the Lahnda–Punjabi isogloss approximates the Pakistani–Indian border.

References

Bibliography

* (This PDF contains multiple articles from the same issue.) * * * * *

External links