Lahnda

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Group of Northwestern Indo-Aryan language varieties

title: "Lahnda" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["northwestern-indo-aryan-languages", "punjabi-dialects", "punjabi-language-in-pakistan"] description: "Group of Northwestern Indo-Aryan language varieties" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahnda" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Group of Northwestern Indo-Aryan language varieties ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox language family"]

Field	Value
name	Lahnda
altname	Western Punjabi
acceptance	classification disputed
ethnicity	Punjabis
region
speakers	118 million
date	2025
ref
familycolor	Indo-European
fam2	Indo-Iranian
fam3	Indo-Aryan
fam4	Northwestern
fam5	Punjabi
ancestor
ancestor2
child1	Dhanni
child2	Hindko
child3	Inku
child4	Jhangvi
child5	Majhi
child6	Pahari-Pothwari
child7	Saraiki
child8	Shahpuri
child9	Thali
children	classification disputed
iso2	lah
iso3	lah
::

::callout[type=note] the linguistic grouping of Punjabi’s western varieties ::

Lahnda (; ਲਹਿੰਦਾ, ), also known as Lahndi or Western Punjabi, is a group of north-western Indo-Aryan language varieties spoken in northern and central parts of Pakistan. It is defined in the ISO 639 standard as a "macrolanguage" or as a "series of dialects" by other authors. Its validity as a genetic grouping is not certain. The terms "Lahnda" and "Western Punjabi" are exonyms employed by linguists, and are not used by the speakers themselves, who refer to their dialects.

Lahnda includes the following dialects: Saraiki (spoken mostly in southern Pakistani Punjab by about 26 million people), the Jatki dialects (referred to as Punjabi by their ~50 million speakers, spoken in the Bar region of 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 (3.5 million speakers in the Pothohar region of Punjab, Azad Kashmir and parts of Indian Jammu and Kashmir), Khetrani (20,000 speakers in Balochistan), and Inku (a possibly extinct language of Afghanistan). 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").

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.

Development

Baba Farid (c. 1188–1266), a celebrated and revered Sufi saint of the Punjab, composed poetry in the Lahnda lect. 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 speakers since 1981, and Hindko speakers from 2017, prior to which both were represented by Punjabi.

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.

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. ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Linguistic_map_of_India,showing_the_areas_where_Indo-Aryan_languages_are_spoken,published_in_the'Imperial_Gazetteer_of_India'(Vol._XXVI,_Atlas;_1931_revised_edition;_plate_no._13).jpg" caption="Lahnda depicted on a linguistic map of India, showing the areas where Indo-Aryan languages are spoken, published in the 'Imperial Gazetteer of India' (Vol. XXVI, Atlas; 1931 revised edition; plate no. 13)."] ::

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.

Script

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

Notes

References

Bibliography

(This PDF contains multiple articles from the same issue.)

References

(24 January 2025). "The 10 Most Spoken Languages In The World In 2025".
{{e26. lah
{{OED. Lahnda
Zograph, G. A.. (2023). "Languages of South Asia: A Guide". Taylor & Francis.
(12 April 2021). "Census-2017 District Wise".
''[[Ethnologue]]'' also subsumes under Lahnda a group of varieties that it labels as "Western Punjabi" ([[ISO 639-3]] code: ''pnb'') – the [[Majhi dialect]]s transitional between Lahnda and [[Punjabi dialects#Eastern Punjabi. lah
"Glottolog 5.0 - Western Panjabi".
"Glottolog 5.0 - Hindko-Siraiki".
Grierson, George A.. (1930). "Lahndā and Lahndī". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Johar, Surinder Singh. (1999). "Guru Gobind Singh : a multi-faceted personality". M.D. Publications.
Shackle, Christopher. (2010). "Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World". Elsevier.
(22 March 2019). "Mian Muhammad Bakhsh – A great Punjabi Sufi Poet".
{{e18. lah
Smirnov, Yuri Andreyevich. (1975). "The Lahndi Language". Nauka Publishing House, Central Department of Oriental Literature.

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