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 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 four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the northwestern region of the country, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa ...

, especially Hazara), 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 K ...

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 (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 ''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 comprehensi ...

'' 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 Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second most populous city in P ...

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 (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 Sindhi may refer to: *something from, or related to Sindh, a province of Pakistan * Sindhi people, an ethnic group from the Sindh region * Sindhi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them People with the name * Sarkash Sindhi (1940–2012 ...

, 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 vari ...

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

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 linguis ...