Lahnda | |
---|---|
لہندا | |
Region | Western Punjab region |
Native speakers | 42 million |
Perso-Arabic (Shahmukhi alphabet) | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-2 | lah |
ISO 639-3 | lah – inclusive codeIndividual codes: hnd – Southern Hindkohno – Northern Hindkojat – Inkuphr – Pahari-Pothwariskr – Saraikixhe – Khetrani |
Glottolog | lahn1241 |
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Lahnda (لہندا) (/ˈlɑːndə/)[2] also known as Lahndi or Western Punjabi, is a group of north-western Indo-Aryan language varieties spoken in parts of Pakistan and India.[3] The main Lahnda languages are Saraiki, Hindko and Pahari/Pothwari.[4] They are spoken in large parts of Pakistani Punjab, in some areas of the Khyber Pakhtunkwa province (especially Hazara), throughout Pakistani-administered Azad Kashmir and in the western parts of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.
Terms like Lahnda or Western Punjabi are exonyms employed by linguists, and are not used by the speakers themselves.[5] The validity of Lahnda as a genetic grouping has not been established.[6]
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 and its number of speakers:[8]
- North Lahnda:
- Hindko: 7.71 million
- Northern Hindko: 4.47 million
- Southern Hindko: 3.24 million
- Pahari-Pothwari; 8.04 million
- Hindko: 7.71 million
- Central Lahnda (Shahpuri): 6 million
- South 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.[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 and Punjabi 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
- ^ Ernst Kausen, 2006. Die Klassifikation der indogermanischen Sprachen (Microsoft Word, 133 KB)
- ^ "Lahnda". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
- ^ 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.
- ^ Shackle 1979, p. 198.
- ^ Masica 1991, p. 17–18.
- ^ a b Masica 1991, p. 18.
- ^ Grierson, George A. (1930). "Lahndā and Lahndī". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 5 (4): 883–887. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00090571.
- ^ Simons & Fennig 2017.
- ^ Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2016b.
- ^ a b Shackle, Christopher (2010). "Lahnda". In Brown, Keith; Ogilvie, Sarah (eds.). Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World. Oxford: Elsevier. p. 635. ISBN 9780080877754.
- ^ Rahman 1997, p. 838.
- ^ Shackle 1977.
- ^ Javaid 2004, p. 46.
- ^ Lahnda at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
Bibliography
- Javaid, Umbreen (2004). "Saraiki political movement: its impact in south Punjab" (PDF). Journal of Research (Humanities). Lahore: Department of English Language & Literature, University of the Punjab. 40 (2): 45–55. (This PDF contains multiple articles from the same issue.)
- Lewis, M. Paul; Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2016b). "Western Punjabi". Ethnologue (19 ed.). (access limited).
- Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2017). "Lahnda". Ethnologue (20 ed.). (access limited).
- Masica, Colin P. (1991). The Indo-Aryan languages. Cambridge language surveys. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-23420-7.
- Rahman, Tariq (1997). "Language and Ethnicity in Pakistan". Asian Survey. 37 (9): 833–839. doi:10.2307/2645700. JSTOR 2645700.
- Shackle, Christopher (1977). "Siraiki: A Language Movement in Pakistan". Modern Asian Studies. 11 (3): 379–403. doi:10.1017/s0026749x00014190. ISSN 0026-749X. JSTOR 311504.
- Shackle, Christopher (1979). "Problems of classification in Pakistan Panjab". Transactions of the Philological Society. 77 (1): 191–210. doi:10.1111/j.1467-968X.1979.tb00857.x. ISSN 0079-1636.
External links
- Map of Lahnda dialects from Grierson's early 20th-century Linguistic Survey of India