Lahnda
Group of Punjabi language varieties
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lahnda (Punjabi: Laehndā, pronounced [lɛ˦n.d̪äː], lit. 'western'),[e] also known as Lahndi or Western Punjabi,[f] is a group of Punjabi language varieties within the north-western branch of the Indo-Aryan language family, spoken in the Punjab, Hazara, and Azad Kashmir regions of Pakistan. It is defined in the ISO 639 standard as a "macrolanguage"[2] or as a "series of dialects" by other authors.[6][g] Its validity as a linguistic genetic grouping is not certain.[7] The terms "Lahnda" and "Western Punjabi" are exonyms employed by linguists, and are not used by the speakers themselves, who refer to their respective dialects or simply the language "Punjabi".[6]
distribution
| Lahnda | |
|---|---|
| Western Punjabi | |
| (classification disputed) | |
| Geographic distribution | |
| Ethnicity | Punjabis[a] |
Native speakers | 118 million (2025)[b] |
| Linguistic classification | Indo-European |
| Subdivisions | classification disputed |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 / 5 | lah |
| ISO 639-3 | lah |
Lahnda includes the following dialects: Saraiki (spoken mostly in southern Pakistani Punjab by about 26 million people); the Jatki dialects (simply referred to as "Punjabi" by their ~50 million speakers,[8] spoken in the Bar region of Central Punjab) i.e. Jhangvi, Shahpuri and Dhanni; the diverse varieties of Hindko (with almost five million speakers in north-western Punjab and neighbouring regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, especially Hazara); Pahari/Pothwari (with 3.5 million speakers predominantly on the Pothohar Plateau of northern Punjab, as well as Azad Kashmir and parts of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir); Khetrani (transitional with Sindhi, 20,000 speakers in Balochistan); and Inku (a possibly extinct language of Afghanistan).[2] Ethnologue also subsumes under Lahnda a group of varieties that it labels as "Western Punjabi" (ISO 639-3 code: pnb) – the Majhi dialects transitional between Lahnda and Eastern Punjabi; these are spoken by about 66 million people.[2][3] Glottolog, however, regards only the Shahpuri, Dhanni and Jatki dialects as "Western Punjabi" within the "Greater Panjabic" family, distinguishing it from the Lahnda varieties ("Hindko-Siraiki" and "Paharic").[9][10]
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.[11]: 883 This term has currency only among linguists.[7]
Development
Baba Farid (c. 1188–1266), a celebrated and revered Punjabi Sufi saint of the 12th century, composed poetry in the Lahnda lect.[12]
Mian Muhammad Bakhsh (c. 1830 – 1907) is another Punjabi poet who composed poetry in a mixture of both the Eastern and Lahnda varieties of Punjabi.[13]
Saraiki (in the south) and Hindko (in the northwest) have been cultivated as literary standards.[14] The development of the standard written Saraiki began in the 1960s.[15][16] The national census of Pakistan has counted Saraiki speakers since 1981, and Hindko speakers from 2017, prior to which both were represented by Punjabi in general.[17]
Classification
Lahnda has several traits that distinguish it from other Punjabi linguistic groups, such as a future tense in -s-. Like Sindhi, Saraiki retains breathy-voiced consonants, has developed implosives, and lacks tone. Hindko, also called Panjistani or (ambiguously) Pahari, is more like Central Punjabi in this regard, though the equivalent of the low-rising tone of Central Punjabi is a high-falling tone in Peshawar Hindko.[14]
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Sindhi and Punjabi groups (including Lahnda) form a dialect continuum with no clear-cut boundaries. Ethnologue classifies the western forms of Central Punjabi and the dialects transitional between Lahnda and Central Punjabi as Lahnda, so that the Lahnda–Eastern Punjabi isogloss approximates the Pakistani–Indian border.[18]
Script
Notes
- including all ethnographic groups such as Hindkowans, Paharis, and Saraikis
- Includes almost all dialects indigenous to Pakistan, including Majhi; but excludes the Eastern Punjabi dialects which are indigenous to India[1]
- The dialect's status is that of being transitional between Western Punjabi and Central Punjabi.
- Although regarded as a separate group as Central Punjabi by many, the Pakistani subdialects of Majhi are regarded by Ethnologue and others to be included in the Lahnda group.[2][3]
- 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.
