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Awankari (', ) is a Punjabi dialect spoken primarily in
Talagang District Talagang District (Urdu/) is an administrative district of Punjab province of Pakistan. Formerly it was Talagang Tehsil within the Chakwal District; its status was raised to District in October 2022 by the government. It is part of the Potoh ...
, in the north-west of the
Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...
i province of
Punjab Punjab (; ; also romanised as Panjāb or Panj-Āb) is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia. It is located in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising areas of modern-day eastern Pakistan and no ...
. Awankari, classified by as a sub-dialect of
Hindko Hindko (, , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken by several million people of various ethnic backgrounds in northwestern Pakistan, primarily in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and northern Pun ...
dialect, is viewed by its native speakers as (a sub-dialect of) Pothwari Punjabi. 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 sub-dialects, 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 () is a district located on the Pothohar Plateau in Punjab, Pakistan. It is located in the northwestern area of the Punjab province, bordered by Talagang to its west, Rawalpindi to its northeast, Jhelum to its east. The distr ...
in northwestern Punjab. To the north, the Sohan River 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 stream (beyond which is found the Dhanochi dialect), while the
Salt Range The Salt Range ( and Namkistan نمکستان) 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 ...
forms the fuzzy southern border with Shahpuri. To the west, the West Gabhir stream separates it from
Thali Thali (meaning "plate" or "tray") or Bhojanam (meaning "full meal") is a round Platter (dishware), 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 sel ...
, with Awankari also spoken beyond the river in Danda Shah Bilawal and Lawa.


Dialects

Hardev Bahri Hardev Bahri (also Bahari; 1 January 1907 – 31 March 2000) was an Indian linguist, literary critic, and lexicographer, notable for his work in Hindi, Punjabi, and other related Indo-Aryan languages. He compiled numerous monolingual and bilingu ...
, 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. 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 (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 or a vowel glide, 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 three vowels , and are short.
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 Human nose, nose and the human mouth, mouth simultaneously, as in the French language, French vowel /ɑ̃/ () or A ...
are relatively rare, but contrastive: ' 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 language, sign) that consists of more than one Word stem, stem. Compounding, composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. C ...
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 Tone may refer to: Visual arts and color-related * Tone (color theory), a mix of tint and shade, in painting and color theory * Tone (color), the lightness or brightness (as well as darkness) of a color * Toning (coin), color change in coins * ...
, 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 In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...
consonants of Awankari come with four
phonation The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, ''phonation'' is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the defi ...
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 s ...
(. 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 and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...
) 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 Alveolus (; pl. alveoli, adj. alveolar) is a general anatomical term for a concave cavity or pit. Uses in anatomy and zoology * Pulmonary alveolus, an air sac in the lungs ** Alveolar cell or pneumocyte ** Alveolar duct ** Alveolar macrophage * M ...
. Among the fricatives, , , and are less common: they are found in about a hundred words each. The
uvular fricative Uvulars are consonants place of articulation, articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the Palatine uvula, uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stop consonant, stops, fricative consonant, ...
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 (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 a networking protocol for optimizing bandwidth and resilience in Ethernet networks, implemented by devices called TRILL switches. TRILL combines techniques from bridging and routing, and ...
(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 Hindko dialects