This article is about the linguistic grouping of Punjabi’s western varieties. For other uses, see Western Punjabi (disambiguation).
For the scripts, see Laṇḍā scripts.
Lahnda
AltnameWestern Punjabi
Acceptanceclassification disputed
EthnicityPunjabis[a]
RegionWest Punjab · Hazara · Azad Kashmir
Speakers118 million
Date2025
Ref[b]
FamilycolorIndo-European
Fam 2Indo-Iranian
Fam 3Indo-Aryan
Fam 4Northwestern
Iso 2lah
Iso 3lah

Lahnda (Punjabi: Laehndā, lɛ˦n.d̪äː, lit. 'western'),[c] also known as Lahndi or Western Punjabi,[1] is a group of Indo-Aryan language varieties, 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.[3][d] Its validity as a linguistic genetic grouping is not certain.[4] The terms "Lahnda" and "Western Punjabi" are exonyms employed by linguists, and are not used by the speakers themselves.[3]

Lahnda includes the following languages and dialects: Saraiki (spoken mostly in southern Pakistani Punjab by about 26 million people); the Jatki languages [5] (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][6] Glottolog, however, regards only the Shahpuri, Dhanni and Jatki dialects as "Western Punjabi" within the "Greater Panjabic" family, distinguishing it from the Lahnda language varieties ("Hindko-Siraiki" and "Paharic").[7][8]

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.[9]: 883 This term has currency only among linguists.[4]

Development

Baba Farid (c. 1188–1266), a celebrated and revered Punjabi Sufi saint of the 12th century, composed poetry in the Lahnda lect.[10]

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.[11]

Saraiki (in the south) and Hindko (in the northwest) have been cultivated as literary standards.[12] The development of the standard written Saraiki began in the 1960s.[13][14] 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.[15]

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.[12]

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.[16]

Script

Lahndi-speaking Sikhs employ the Gurmukhi script for recording the language rather than the Perso-Arabic-based Shahmukhi script.[17]

Notes

  1. ^ including all ethnographic groups such as Hindkowans, Paharis, and Saraikis
  2. ^ Includes almost all dialects indigenous to Pakistan, including Majhi; but excludes the Eastern Punjabi dialects which are indigenous to India[18]
  3. ^ /ˈlɑːndə/;[19] Shahmukhi: , Gurmukhi: ਲਹਿੰਦਾ
  4. ^ 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.

References

  1. ^ Zograph, G. A. (2023). "Chapter 3". Languages of South Asia: A Guide. Reprint ed. Taylor & Francis. p. 52. ISBN 9781000831597. LAHNDA – Lahnda (Lahndi) or Western Panjabi is the name given to a group of dialects spread over the northern half of Pakistan. In the north, they come into contact with the Dardic languages with which they share some common features, In the east, they turn gradually into Panjabi, and in the south into Sindhi. In the south-east there is a clearly defined boundary between Lahnda and Rajasthani, and in the west a similarly well-marked boundary between it and the Iranian languages Baluchi and Pushtu. The number of people speaking Lahnda can only be guessed at: it is probably in excess of 20 million.
  2. ^
  3. ^ Masica 1991, pp. 17–18.
  4. ^ Masica 1991, p. 18.
  5. ^ "Census-2017 District Wise". Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. 12 April 2021. Retrieved 23 November 2024.
  6. ^ Shackle 1979, p. 198.
  7. ^ "Glottolog 5.0 - Western Panjabi"
  8. ^ "Glottolog 5.0 - Hindko-Siraiki"
  9. ^ Grierson, George A. (1930). "Lahndā and Lahndī". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 5 (4): 883–887. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00090571. S2CID 160784067
  10. ^ Johar, Surinder Singh (1999). Guru Gobind Singh : a multi-faceted personality. New Delhi: M.D. Publications. p. 56. ISBN 81-7533-093-7. OCLC 52865201
  11. ^ "Mian Muhammad Bakhsh – A great Punjabi Sufi Poet". 22 March 2019. Archived 22 March 2019 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 3 May 2023.
  12. ^ Shackle, Christopher (2010). "Lahnda". Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World. Oxford: Elsevier. p. 635. ISBN 9780080877754.
  13. ^ Rahman 1997, p. 838.
  14. ^ Shackle 1977.
  15. ^ Javaid 2004, p. 46.
  16. ^
  17. ^ Smirnov, Yuri Andreyevich (1975). The Lahndi Language. Nauka Publishing House, Central Department of Oriental Literature. p. 28. Lahndi-speaking Sikhs frequently use the Gurmukhi alphabet to write texts in the language.
  18. ^ "The 10 Most Spoken Languages In The World In 2025". babbel.com. 24 January 2025.
  19. ^

Bibliography

Further reading