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Lahnda

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the scripts, seeLaṇḍā scripts.

Lahnda
لہندا
RegionWesternPunjab region
EthnicityPunjabis
Perso-Arabic
(Shahmukhi Alpha bet)
Language codes
ISO 639-2lah
ISO 639-3lah

Lahnda(/ˈlɑːndə/;[1]لہندا,Punjabi pronunciation:[lɛ˦n.d̪äː]), also known asLahndiorWestern Punjabi,[2]is a group of north-westernIndo-Aryanlanguage varieties spoken in parts of Pakistan and India. It is defined in theISO 639standard as a "macrolanguage"[3]or as a "series of dialects" by other authors.[4][a]Its validity as agenetic groupingis not certain.[5]The terms "Lahnda" and "Western Punjabi" areexonymsemployed by linguists, and are not used by the speakers themselves.[4]

Lahnda includes the following languages:Saraiki(spoken mostly in southernPakistani Punjabby about 26 million people),Jatkidialects, the diverse varieties ofHindko(with almost five million speakers in north-western Punjab and neighbouring regions ofKhyber Pakhtunkhwa,especiallyHazara),Pahari/Pothwari(3.5 million speakers in thePothoharregion of Punjab,Azad Kashmirand parts of IndianJammu and Kashmir),Khetrani(20,000 speakers inBalochistan), andInku(a possibly extinct language of Afghanistan).[3]Ethnologuealso subsumes under Lahnda a group of varieties that it labels as "Western Punjabi" (ISO 639-3code:pnb) – theMajhi dialectstransitional between Lahnda andEastern Punjabi;these are spoken by about 66 million people.[3][6]Glottolog,however, regards only theShahpuri,DhanniandJatkidialects as "Western Punjabi" within the "Greater Panjabic" family, distinguishing it from the Lahnda varieties ( "Hindko-Siraiki" and "Paharic" ).[7][8]

Name

Lahndameans "western" in Punjabi. It was coined byWilliam St. Clair Tisdall(in the formLahindā) probably around 1890 and later adopted by a number of linguists — notablyGeorge Abraham Grierson— for a dialect group that had no general local name.[9]: 883 This term has currency only among linguists.[5]

Development

Baba Farid(c. 1188–1266), a celebrated and revered Sufi saint of the Punjab, composed poetry in the Lahnda lect.[10]Saraiki and Hindko have been cultivated as literary languages.[11]The development of the standard written Saraiki began in the 1960s.[12][13]The national census of Pakistan has counted Saraiki speakers since 1981, and Hindko speakers from 2017, prior to which both were represented by Punjabi.[14]

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.[15]

Classification

Lahnda has several traits that distinguish it from Punjabi, such as a future tense in-s-.LikeSindhi,Siraiki retains breathy-voiced consonants, has developed implosives, and lacks tone. Hindko, also calledPanjistanior (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.[11]

Sindhi, Lahnda and Punjabi form adialect continuumwith no clear-cut boundaries.Ethnologueclassifies the western dialects of Punjabi as Lahnda, so that the Lahnda–Punjabi isogloss approximates the Pakistani–Indian border.[16]

Script

Lahndi-speakingSikhsemploy theGurmukhiscript for recording the language rather than the Perso-Arabic-basedShahmukhiscript.[17]

Notes

  1. ^For the difficulties in assigning the labels "language" and "dialect", seeShackle (1979)for Punjabi andMasica (1991,pp. 23–27) forIndo-Aryangenerally.

References

  1. ^"Lahnda".Oxford English Dictionary(Online ed.).Oxford University Press.(Subscription orparticipating institution membershiprequired.)
  2. ^Zograph, G. A. (2023). "Chapter 3".Languages of South Asia: A Guide(Reprint ed.). Taylor & Francis. p. 52.ISBN9781000831597.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.
  3. ^abcLahndaatEthnologue(26th ed., 2023)Closed access icon
  4. ^abMasica 1991,pp. 17–18.
  5. ^abMasica 1991,p. 18.
  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.S2CID160784067.
  10. ^Johar, Surinder Singh (1999).Guru Gobind Singh: a multi-faceted personality.New Delhi: M.D. Publications. p. 56.ISBN81-7533-093-7.OCLC52865201.
  11. ^abShackle, Christopher(2010). "Lahnda". In Brown, Keith; Ogilvie, Sarah (eds.).Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World.Oxford: Elsevier. p. 635.ISBN9780080877754.
  12. ^Rahman 1997,p. 838.
  13. ^Shackle 1977.
  14. ^Javaid 2004,p. 46.
  15. ^"Mian Muhammad Bakhsh – A great Punjabi Sufi Poet".22 March 2019. Archived from the original on 22 March 2019.Retrieved3 May2023.{{cite web}}:CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  16. ^LahndaatEthnologue(18th ed., 2015)(subscription required)
  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 Alpha bet to write texts in the language.

Bibliography

Further reading

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