User:عُثمان/Lahandi

Lahandi, also spelled Lahendi, Lehendi, and Lahndi, represents a dialect continuum of spoken Punjabi associated with western areas of Punjab.

The main Lahnda languages are Saraiki, Hindko and Pahari/Pothwari. 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. The validity of Lahnda as a genetic grouping has not been established.

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. This term has currency only among linguists.

Varieties
Below is a list of the varieties of Lahnda and its number of speakers: 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.
 * North Lahnda:
 * Hindko: 7.71 million
 * Northern Hindko: 4.47 million
 * Southern Hindko: 3.24 million
 * Pahari-Pothwari; 8.04 million
 * Central Lahnda (Shahpuri): 6 million
 * South Lahnda:
 * Saraiki; 26 million
 * Multani
 * Thali
 * Riasti
 * Inku
 * Khetrani

Development
Saraiki and Hindko have been cultivated as literary languages. The development of the standard written Saraiki began in the 1960s. The national census of Pakistan has counted Saraiki and Hindko speakers since 1981.

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.

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.