Region Western Punjab region ISO 639-2 lah | Standard forms Saraiki
Hindko | |
Native speakers ca. 117 million (2016 (estimate)) Language family Indo-European
Indo-Iranian
Indo-Aryan
Northwestern
Punjabi
Western Punjabi Writing system Perso-Arabic
(Shahmukhi alphabet) | ||
Western Punjabi (لہندا پنجابی /pʌndʒˈɑːbi/), Lahnda (/ˈlɑːndə/) or Lahndi, is a "macrolanguage" consisting of a series of dialects spoken in Pakistani Punjab, and parts of Azad Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. These terms are exonyms and are not used by the speakers themselves. The emerging languages of this dialect area are Saraiki, Hindko and Pothohari. The validity of Lahnda as a genetic grouping is not established.
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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. The southern varieties are locally called Saraiki, and northwestern varieties Hindko or Panjistani. The main identifier of Lahnda is use of 'ahā' in the past instead of the Standard Punjabi "sì sì'gē and sàn,"
Varieties
Below is a list of the varieties of Lahnda:
Within Lahnda, Ethnologue also includes what it labels as "Western Punjabi" (ISO 639-3 code: pnb) – the Majhi dialects transitional between Lahnda and Eastern Punjabi; these are spoken by about 62 million people.
Recently, Saraiki and Hindko are being 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.
Khetrani is commonly included, but may be a remnant of a Dardic language. Some of the northern dialects of what has for geographical reasons been considered Gujarati are actually closer to Lahnda. There is also a Lahnda language in Afghanistan and Ukraine in the form of Jakati.
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, Punjabi, and Western Pahari form a dialect continuum 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.