Lahnda

Lahnda (/ˈlɑːndə/)[2] also known as Lahndi or Western Punjabi, is a group of north-western Indo-Aryan language varieties spoken in Pakistani Punjab and in parts of the neighbouring Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.[3] These terms are exonyms and are not used by the speakers themselves.[4] The emerging languages of this dialect area are Saraiki, Hindko and Pothohari.[5] The validity of Lahnda as a genetic grouping has not been established.[6]

For the scripts, see Laṇḍā scripts.

Lahnda
RegionWestern Punjab region
Perso-Arabic
(Shahmukhi alphabet)
Language codes
ISO 639-2lah
ISO 639-3lah – inclusive code
Individual codes:
hnd – Southern Hindko
hno – Northern Hindko
jat – Inku
phr – Pahari-Pothwari
skr – Saraiki
xhe – Khetrani
Glottologlahn1241

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.[7]:883 This term has currency only among linguists.[6]

Varieties

Below is a list of the varieties of Lahnda:[8]

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.[9]

Development

Recently, Saraiki and Hindko are being cultivated as literary languages.[10] The development of the standard written Saraiki began in the 1960s.[11][12] The national census of Pakistan has counted Saraiki and Hindko speakers since 1981.[13]

Classification

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.[10]

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.[14]

References
  1. Ernst Kausen, 2006. Die Klassifikation der indogermanischen Sprachen (Microsoft Word, 133 KB)
  2. "Lahnda". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  3. Defined as a "macrolanguage" in Simons & Fennig (2017) and as a "series of dialects" in Masica (1991, pp. 17–18). For the difficulties in assigning the labels "language" and "dialect", see Shackle (1979) for Punjabi and Masica (1991, pp. 23–27) for Indo-Aryan generally.
  4. Masica 1991, p. 17–18.
  5. Shackle 1979, p. 198.
  6. Masica 1991, p. 18.
  7. Grierson, George A. (1930). "Lahndā and Lahndī". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 5 (4): 883–887. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00090571.
  8. Simons & Fennig 2017.
  9. Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2016b.
  10. Shackle, Christopher (2010). "Lahnda". In Brown, Keith; Ogilvie, Sarah (eds.). Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World. Oxford: Elsevier. p. 635. ISBN 9780080877754.
  11. Rahman 1997, p. 838.
  12. Shackle 1977.
  13. Javaid 2004, p. 46.
  14. Lahnda at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)

Bibliography
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