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 An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, ...

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 (with almost five million speakers in north-western Punjab and neighbouring regions of

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (; ps, خېبر پښتونخوا; Urdu, Hindko: خیبر پختونخوا) commonly abbreviated as KP or KPK, is one of the Administrative units of Pakistan, four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the Geography of Pakistan, ...

, especially Hazara), Pahari/Pothwari (3.5 million speakers in north-central Punjab, Azad Kashmir and parts of Indian Jammu and Kashmir), Khetrani (20,000 speakers in

Balochistan Balochistan ( ; bal, بلۏچستان; also romanised as Baluchistan and Baluchestan) is a historical region in Western and South Asia, located in the Iranian plateau's far southeast and bordering the Indian Plate and the Arabian Sea coastline. ...

), and Inku (a possibly extinct language of Afghanistan). The languages encyclopedia '' Ethnologue'' also subsumes under Lahnda a group of varieties that it labels as "Western Punjabi" (

ISO 639-3 ISO 639-3:2007, ''Codes for the representation of names of languages – Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages'', is an international standard for language codes in the ISO 639 series. It defines three-letter codes for ...

code: ''pnb'') – the

Majhi dialect Majhi (Shahmukhi: Gurmukhi: ) is the standard dialect of Punjabi and is spoken in the Majha region of the Punjab. The two most important cities in this area are Lahore and Amritsar Amritsar (), historically also known as Rāmdāspur an ...

s 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 T ...

(in the form ''Lahindā'') probably around 1890 and later adopted by a number of linguists — notably George Abraham Grierson — 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 A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...

with no clear-cut boundaries. '' Ethnologue'' 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

Map of Lahnda dialects
from Grierson's early 20th-century

Linguistic Survey of India The Linguistic Survey of India (LSI) is a comprehensive survey of the languages of British India, describing 364 languages and dialects. The Survey was first proposed by George Abraham Grierson, a member of the Indian Civil Service and a linguist ...