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Awankari (', Awankari pronunciation: ) is an Indo-Aryan dialect of Pakistan. Classified as a dialect 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 P ...
, and hence of
Lahnda 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 Punja ...
(Western Punjabi), it is spoken mostly in parts of
Chakwal District Chakwal District ( Punjabi and ur, ) is in Pothohar Plateau of Punjab, Pakistan. It is located in the north of the Punjab province, Chakwal district is bordered by Khushab to its south, Rawalpindi to its north east, Jhelum to its east, Mianwa ...
in the north-west of the province of
Punjab Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising ...
. The name ''Awankari'', though common in the earlier literature, appears not to be in use any more: in the 1990s it was observed that people called their speech ''Punjabi'' even though they recognised it is more similar to Hindko than to the standard Punjabi of the city of Lahore. The rest of this article is based entirely on Hardev Bahri's work of the 1930s. It is possible that the geographic extent, the division into subdialects, and the linguistic characteristics might have changed since then.


Geographic extent

Awankari is spoken primarily in the Awankari tract, which occupies the western half of
Chakwal District Chakwal District ( Punjabi and ur, ) is in Pothohar Plateau of Punjab, Pakistan. It is located in the north of the Punjab province, Chakwal district is bordered by Khushab to its south, Rawalpindi to its north east, Jhelum to its east, Mianwa ...
in northwestern Punjab. To the north, the
Sohan River The Soan River ( ur, ), also referred to as the Swan, Sawan, or Sohan, is a river in Punjab, Pakistan. Location and geography The Soan River is a stream in the Pothohar or North Punjab region of Pakistan, and drains much of the water of Potho ...
separates it from the Ghebi dialect, although Awankari extends beyond the river in Tarap and Injra. The eastern boundary roughly coincides with the
East Gabhir East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...
stream (beyond which is found the
Dhanochi Dhani, or Dhanni, is a group of Western Punjabi dialects spoken in parts of Rawalpindi Division (Pothohar) of Pakistani Punjab. They are spoken throughout a widespread area, including Chakwal and Jhelum Districts, as well as in neighbouring Attoc ...
dialect), while the
Salt Range The Salt Range ( pnb, ) is a mountain range in the north of Punjab province of Pakistan, deriving its name from its extensive deposits of rock salt. The range extends along the south of the Potohar Plateau and the north of the Jhelum River. Th ...
forms the fuzzy southern border with Shahpuri. To the west, the West Gabhir stream separates it from
Thali Thali (meaning "plate"), Bhojanam (meaning "full meal") or Chakluk is a round platter used to serve food in South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean. Thali is also used to refer to an Indian-style meal made up of a selection of various di ...
, with Awankari also spoken beyond the river in
Danda Shah Bilawal Danda Shah Bilawal is a village in Punjab, Pakistan located on the midway on the main road linking Mianwali and Talagang. It is a local trade centre for surrounding villages owing to its location. Etymology ''Danda'' means "small hill" while ...
and Lawa.


Dialects

Hardev Bahri Hardev Bahri ( pa, ਹਰਦੇਵ ਬਾਹਰੀ, hi, हरदेव बाहरी, translit=Hardev Bāhrī, also Bahari; 1907—2000) was an Indian linguist, literary critic, and lexicographer of the 20th century, notable for his work in Hin ...
, who did linguistic work on Awankari in the 1930s, identifies three subdialects. Waṇāḍhī is spoken in the eastern half of Awankari's territory, in the plains of the Wanadh region centred on the town of
Talagang Talagang ( ur, ) is a city and the headquarters of the Talagang District located in Punjab, Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's ...
. The Ankar stream separates it from the two western dialects: Reshī in the north-west (named after the stream of Resh), and Pākhṛī in the southwest, the two divided by a series of groves locally known as ''Rakhs''. Bahri also noted the differences of vocabulary between the speech forms of Muslims and Hindus. For example, "Thursday" is among Muslims and among Hindus, "to bathe" is among Muslims and among Hindus; Muslims have for "where?" and Hindus have . A further difference was that the
retroflex lateral The voiced retroflex lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is l`. The retroflex l ...
(see below) was generally only kept distinctive in the speech of Muslims, with Hindus pronouncing it the same way as the "normal" alveolar lateral .


Phonology

This section follows Bahri's description of Awankari as spoken at the end of the 1930s.


Vowels

The following words illustrate the contrasts between the vowels: 'meet', 'mile', 'price', 'principal (sum)', 'marriage, guests', 'dirt', 'rub', 'cattle', 'soft', 'shoe'. Some speakers pronounce as a
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
. The three vowels , and are
short Short may refer to: Places * Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon * Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community * Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place People * Short (surname) * List of people known as ...
.
Nasal vowels A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are produced with ...
are relatively rare, but contrastive: 'Loo (wind), a type of hot wind' contrasts with 'hair', and 'make one play' – with 'scatter'. Non-phonemic nasalisation occurs under the influence of adjacent nasal consonants. A vowel will get nasalised before a nasal consonants unless this consonant is in a different, unstressed, syllable (for instance, there is nasalisation in 'mine', but not in 'ill'). A vowel is also nasalised after a nasal consonant provided the vowel is unstressed and at the end of a word of more than one syllable ( 'gold').


Stress and tones

The position of stress is usually predictable. In words of three or more syllables, there is a prominent stress on the second syllable from the end. In words of two syllables, stress will depend on the relative length of the vowels: if the vowels in the two syllables are both long or both short, then both syllables get equal stress; if the first vowel is long and the second short, then there is a slight stress on the first syllable; if the first syllable is short and the second one long, then there is a prominent stress on the second syllable. There are exceptions; for example in
compound word In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word or sign) that consists of more than one stem. Compounding, composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. Compounding occurs wh ...
s, the position of stress depends on the type of compound involved. Stress is particularly prominent in the southwestern Pakhri subdialect, where it is accompanied by a jerk of the head and a rise of the larynx. It is so prominent that speakers of other dialects have described Pakhri as a "loud and vigorous language" whose speakers "throw stones of sounds". Unlike most other Indo-Aryan languages, Awankari possesses a system of contrastive tone, which is however simpler than that of Punjabi. Hardev Bahri has described the following tones: 1) the level tone characteristic of most syllables, 2) a tone realised as falling in the Wanadhi dialect and as high in Reshi, 3) a low rising tone found in only about a dozen words. Tone is contrastive: (falling tone) 'rope' vs. (level tone) 'property'; (falling tone) 'fire' vs. (level tone) 'rate', (falling tone) 'to snatch' vs. (level tone) 'bad habit', and 'darkness' (low rising tone) vs. 'a personal name' (level tone).; Each word can have only one contrastive tone. In the analysis of Kalicharan Bahl, the rare low rising tone is treated as a non-phonemic effect that accompanies medial . Awankari is then regarded as having two tones: a level tone and a falling tone (or rising tone, depending on the dialect).


Consonants

The plosive consonants of Awankari come with four phonation types:
voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...
(), aspirated (),
voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refe ...
(), and
voiced aspirated Breathy voice (also called murmured voice, whispery voice, soughing and susurration) is a phonation in which the vocal folds vibrate, as they do in normal (modal) voicing, but are adjusted to let more air escape which produces a sighing-like ...
(. In the western dialects there is a tendency for the loss of aspiration (in both voiced and voiceless plosives) in certain contexts : compare Wanadhi with Reshi 'pocket'. The phonemes //, //, // and // are plosives (not
affricates An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop consonant, stop and releases as a fricative consonant, fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal consonant, coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop a ...
) articulated with the front of the tongue touching the palate, with the tongue's blade against the alveolars. The aspirated is more front than . The plosives , , , and are dental, while and are alveolar. Among the fricatives, , , and are less common: they are found in about a hundred words each. The
uvular fricative Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does no ...
s // (as in 'came out') and // ( 'paint') are articulated further back in the throat than the velar plosives, but not as far back as in Persian; is not always distinguished from . The palatal // (as in 'hunter') is articulated against the hard palate, with the tongue blade touching the upper teeth and tongue tip reaching the lower teeth. Of the nasals, only the bilabial and the alveolar occur in all positions. The retroflex occurs in the middle or at the end of words: 'one-eyed', 'sister'). The palatal () and velar () nasals are usually found only before the corresponding plosive ( 'curved', 'for nothing'). Exceptions are found in the Reshi sub-dialect, which for example has 'bangles', where the Wanadhi dialect has ). The
retroflex lateral The voiced retroflex lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is l`. The retroflex l ...
(as in 'gardener'), a sound described by Bahri as "important and peculiar" to Awankari, is of uncertain phonemic status. It is not found at the start of a word. Its articulation is accompanied by a widening of the pharynx and raising of the epiglottis. Hardev Bahri observed in the 1930s that it was generally not pronounced by the Hindus, especially in the big villages, who substituted it with the alveolar . For those speakers who do pronounce it, it can occur in the middle and at the end of words, in contrast to the alveolar which is found only word-initially. The retroflex // ( 'lie') is a flap consonant and it only occurs in the middle or at the end of the word. The alveolar // (as in 'distant') is a
trill TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) is an Internet Standard implemented by devices called TRILL switches. TRILL combines techniques from bridging and routing, and is the application of link-state routing to the VLAN-aware cust ...
(a "rolled ''r''"). In its articulation the tongue normally makes two contacts, but the number varies depending on the context: it is greater in a stressed position or before a high-falling tone, a long vowel, or . It is smaller if followed by either a plosive, or the sibilants and , or if occurring in a syllable that precedes the stressed syllable.


References


Bibliography

* * * * * {{Punjabi dialects Punjabi dialects