Native to Pakistan, India | ||
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Region Pothohar region, Azad Kashmir and Poonch (Jammu and Kashmir) Native speakers 2.5 million including Dhundi-Kairali, Chibhali, & Punchhi, but perhaps not 1.04 million Mirpuri (2007) Language family Indo-European
Indo-Iranian
Indo-Aryan
Northwestern
Punjabi
Lahnda
Pothohari ISO 639-3 phr (includes other dialects) Glottolog paha1251 (Pahari Potwari) | ||
Pothwari (پوٹھواری), Pothohari (پوٹھوہاری), or Pahari-Potowari is an Indo-Aryan dialect of Pakistan that is transitional between Hindko and Standard Punjabi. It is spoken by inhabitants of the Pothohar Plateau in northern Punjab and in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan and Poonch of Jammu and Kashmir, India.
Speakers of Pothwari have a local linguistic, but not ethnic, identity that is separate from that of Punjabi and there has been a nascent, if not yet coherent, language movement. There have been efforts at cultivation as a literary language, although a local standard has not been established yet.
It has been historically classified as a Punjabi dialect. Grierson in his early 20th-century Linguistic Survey of India assigned it to a so-called "Northern cluster" of Lahnda, but this classification, as well as the validity of the Lahnda grouping in this case, have been called into question.