Pahari-Pothwari

The Indo-Aryan language spoken on the Pothohar Plateau in the far north of Pakistani Punjab, as well as in most of Pakistan's Azad Kashmir and in western areas of India's Jammu and Kashmir, is known by a variety of names, the most common of which are Pahari (English: /pəˈhɑːri/;^[1] an ambiguous name also applied to unrelated languages of India), and Pothwari (or Pothohari).

Pahari-Pothwari
پوٹھواری, پہاڑی Poṭhwārī, Pahāṛī
Native to	Pakistan, India
Region	Pothohar region, Azad Kashmir and western parts of Jammu and Kashmir, other parts of India including Punjab and Haryana (by partition refugees and descendants)
Native speakers	several million^[a]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Northwestern Lahnda Pahari-Pothwari
Language codes
ISO 639-3	phr
Glottolog	paha1251  Pahari Potwari

The language is transitional between Hindko and Standard Punjabi.^[2] There have been efforts at cultivation as a literary language,^[3] although a local standard has not been established yet.^[4]

Grierson in his early 20th-century Linguistic Survey of India assigned it to a so-called "Northern cluster" of Lahnda (Western Punjabi), but this classification, as well as the validity of the Lahnda grouping in this case, have been called into question.^[5]

Geographic distribution and dialects

[Interactive fullscreen map]

Azad Kashmir and surrounding areas with some of the locations mentioned in this section. Places where Pahari–Pothwari is spoken are in dark red.

There are at least three major dialects: Pothwari, Mirpuri and Pahari.^[b] They are mutually intelligible,^[6] but the difference between the northernmost and the southernmost dialects (from Muzaffarabad and Mirpur respectively) is enough to cause difficulties in understanding.^[7]

Pothohar Plateau

Pothwari (پوٹھواری), also spelt Potwari, Potohari and Pothohari (پوٹھوہاری),^[8] is spoken in the Pothohar Plateau of northern Punjab,^[9] an area administratively within Rawalpindi division.^[10] Pothwari extends southwards up to the Salt Range, with the city of Jhelum marking the border with Punjabi. To the north, Pothwari transitions into the Pahari-speaking area, with Bharakao, near Islamabad, generally regarded as the point where Pothwari ends and Pahari begins.^[11] Pothwari has been represented as a dialect of Punjabi by the Punjabi language movement, ^[4] and in census reports the Pothwari areas of Punjab have been shown as Punjabi-majority.^[c]

Mirpur

East of the Pothwari areas, across the Jhelum River into Mirpur District in Azad Kashmir, the language is more similar to Pothwari than to the Pahari spoken in the rest of Azad Kashmir.^[12] Locally it is known by a variety of names:^[d] Pahari, Mirpur Pahari, Mirpuri,^[e] and Pothwari,^[13] while some of its speakers call it Punjabi.^[14] Mirpuris possess a strong sense of Kashmiri identity that overrides linguistic identification with closely related groups outside Azad Kashmir.^[15] The Mirpur region has been the source of the greater part of Pakistani immigration to the UK, a process that started when thousands were displaced by the construction of the Mangla Dam in the 1960s and emigrated to fill labour shortages in England.^[16] The British Mirpuri diaspora now numbers several hundred thousand, and Pahari has been argued to be the second most common mother tongue in the UK, yet the language is little known in the wider society there and its status has remained surrounded by confusion.^[17]

Kashmir, Murree and the Galyat

Pahari (پہاڑی) is spoken to the north of Pothwari. The central cluster of Pahari dialects is found around Murree.^[18] This area is in the Galyat: the hill country of Murree Tehsil in the northeast of Rawalpindi District (just north of the capital Islamabad) and the adjoining areas in southeastern Abbottabad District.^[19] One name occasionally found in the literature for this language is Dhundi-Kairali (Ḍhūṇḍī-Kaiṛālī), a term first used by Grierson^[20] who based it on the names of the two major tribes of the area – the Kairal and the Dhund.^[9] Its speakers call it Pahari in Murree tehsil, while in Abbotabad district it is known as either Hindko or Ḍhūṇḍī.^[21] Nevertheless, Hindko – properly the language of the rest of Abbottabad District and the neighbouring areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – is generally regarded as a different language.^[22] It forms a dialect continuum with Pahari, ^[9] and the transition between the two is in northern Azad Kashmir and in the Galyat region. For example, on the road from Murree northwest towards the city of Abbottabad, Pahari gradually changes into Hindko between Ayubia and Nathiagali.^[23]

A closely related dialect is spoken across the Jhelum River in Azad Kashmir, north of the Mirpuri areas. Names associated in the literature with this dialect are Pahari (itself the term most commonly used by the speakers themselves), Chibhālī,^[24] named after the Chibhal region^[25] or the Chibh ethnic group,^[10] and Poonchi (پونچھی, also spelt Punchhi). The latter name has been variously applied to either the Chibhali variety specific to the district of Poonch,^[26] or to the dialect of the whole northern half of Azad Kashmir.^[27] This dialect (or dialects) has been seen either as a separate dialect from the one in Murree,^[20] or as belonging to the same central group of Pahari dialects.^[28] The dialect of the district of Bagh, for example, has more shared vocabulary with the core dialects from Murree (86–88%) than with the varieties of either Muzaffarabad (84%) or Mirpur (78%).^[29]

In Muzaffarabad the dialect shows lexical similarity^[f] of 83–88% with the central group of Pahari dialects, which is high enough for the authors of the sociolinguistic survey to classify it is a central dialect itself, but low enough to warrant noting its borderline status.^[30] The speakers however tend to call their language Hindko^[31] and to identify more with the Hindko spoken to the west,^[32] despite the lower lexical similarity (73–79%) with the core Hindko dialects of Abbottabad and Mansehra.^[33] Further north into the Neelam Valley the dialect, now known locally as Parmi, becomes closer to Hindko.^[34]

Pahari is also spoken further east across the Line of Control into the Pir Panjal mountains in Indian Jammu and Kashmir. The population, estimated at 1 million,^[35] is found in the region between the Jhelum and Chenab rivers: most significantly in the districts of Poonch and Rajouri, to a lesser extent in neighbouring Baramulla and Kupwara,^[36] and also – as a result of the influx of refugees during the Partition of 1947 – scattered throughout the rest of Jammu and Kashmir.^[37] Pahari is among the regional languages listed in the sixth schedule of the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir.^[38] This Pahari is sometimes conflated with the Western Pahari languages spoken in the mountainous region in the south-east of Indian Jammu and Kashmir. These languages, which include Bhadarwahi and its neighbours, are often called "Pahari", but they are not closely related to Pahari–Pothwari.^[39]

Phonology

Vowels

Vowels of Pahari

	Front		Central		Back
	oral	nasal	oral	nasal	oral	nasal
Close	iː	ĩː			uː	ũː
Near-close	ɪ				ʊ
Mid	e eː	ẽː	ə		o oː
Open	æ æː		aː	ãː

Vowels of Pothwari

	Front		Central		Back
	oral	nasal	oral	nasal	oral	nasal
Close	i iː	ĩ ĩː			u uː	ũ ũː
Mid	e	ẽ	ɐ	ɐ̃	o	õ
Open					ɑ	ɑ̃

A long diphthong /ɑi/ can be realized as [äː].^[40]

Consonants

Consonants of Pahari^[41]

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t̪	t	t͡ʃ		k
	aspirated	pʰ	t̪ʰ	tʰ	t͡ʃʰ		kʰ
	voiced	b	d̪	d	d͡ʒ		ɡ
Fricative	voiceless	f		s	ʃ		x
	voiced	v		z			ɣ	ɦ
Nasal		m		n			ŋ
Approximant				l		j
Tap/Trill				r	ɽ

Consonants of Pothwari^[40]

		Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palato- alveolar	Palatal	Velar/ Uvular	Glottal
Stop	voiceless	p	t	ʈ			k
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ	ʈʰ			kʰ
	voiced	b	d	ɖ			ɡ
	breathy	bʱ	dʱ	ɖʱ			ɡʱ
Affricate	voiceless		t͡s
	aspirated		t͡sʰ
	voiced		d͡z
Fricative	voiceless	(f)	s		ʃ		(χ)	h
	voiced	v	z		(ʒ)		(ʁ)
Nasal		m	n	ɳ
Approximant			l	ɭ		j
Tap/Trill			r	ɽ

• Sounds [f, ʒ, χ, ʁ, q] are heard from Persian and Arabic loanwords.
• /h/ is realized as voiced [ɦ] in word-initial position.
• /n/ before a velar consonant can be heard as [ŋ].^[40]

Comparison with Punjabi

 

Potohar scenery with hill backdrop

- Use of Sī-endings for Future Tense

English	Pothwari			Punjabi
	Transliteration	Shahmukhi	Gurmukhi	Transliteration	Shahmukhi	Gurmukhi
I will do	Mãi karsā̃	مَیں کرساں	ਮੈਂ ਕਰਸਾਂ	Mãi karāngā	مَیں کرانگا	ਮੈਂ ਕਰਾਂਗਾ
We will do	Asā̃ karsā̃	اَساں کرساں	ਅਸਾਂ ਕਰਸਾਂ	Asī̃ karānge	اَسِیں کرانگے	ਅਸੀਂ ਕਰਾਂਗੇ
You will do (s)	Tū̃ karsãi	تُوں کرسَیں	ਤੂੰ ਕਰਸੈਂ	Tū̃ karengā	تُوں کریں گا	ਤੂੰ ਕਰੇਂਗਾ
You will do (p)	Tusā̃ karso	تُساں کرسو	ਤੁਸਾਂ ਕਰਸੋ	Tusī̃ karoge	تُسِیں کروگے	ਤੁਸੀਂ ਕਰੋਗੇ
He/She will do	Ó karsi	اوه کَرسی	ਓਹ ਕਰਸੀ	Ó karega	اوه کرے گا	ਓਹ ਕਰੇਗਾ
They will do	Ó karsan	اوہ کرسن	ਓਹ ਕਰਸਨ	Ó karaṇge	اوه کرݨ گے	ਓਹ ਕਰਣਗੇ

Object Marker

The object marker in Pothwari is kī (ਕੀ /کی) as opposed to nū̃ (ਨੂੰ / نوں) in Punjabi.

For example:

The phrase: lokā̃ kī (ਲੋਕਾਂ ਕੀ / لوکاں کی), meaning "to the people" in Standard Punjabi, would become lokā̃ nū̃ (ਲੋਕਾਂ ਨੂੰ / لوکاں نوں).

Genitive Marker

The Genitive marker in Pothwari is represented through the use of nā (ਨਾ / نا) as opposed to dā (ਦਾ / دا).

For example:

The phrase: lokā̃ dā (ਲੋਕਾਂ ਦਾ / لوکاں دا), meaning "people's" or "of the people" in Pothwari, would become lokā̃ nā (ਲੋਕਾਂ ਨਾ / لوکاں نا).

The word for 'my' becomes māhaṛā (ਮਾਹੜਾ / ماہڑا; m.) instead of māhaṛī (ਮਾਹੜੀ / ماہڑی; f.).

Vocabulary

Very clear point of departure occurs in the use of achṇā (ਅੱਛਣਾ / اچھݨا 'to come') and gachṇā (ਗੱਛਣਾ / گچھݨا 'to go') as opposed to Saraiki āvaṇ (ਆਵਣ / آوݨ) and vañjaṇ (ਵੰਞਣ / وڄݨ), and Punjabi āuṇā (ਆਉਣਾ / آؤݨا) and jāṇā (ਜਾਣਾ / جاݨا).

Notes

1. Baart (2003, p. 10) provides an estimate of 3.8 million, presumably for the population in Pakistan alone. Lothers & Lothers (2010, p. 9) estimate the Pakistani population at well over 2.5 million and the UK diaspora at over 0.5 million. The population in India is reported in Ethnologue (2017) to be about 1 million as of 2000.
2. According to Lothers & Lothers (2010, p. 2). Abbasi (2010, p. 104) adds as a fourth dialect the Poonchi spoken from Poonch to the Neelam Valley. Yet another classification is reportedly presented in Karnai (2007).
3. For example, according to the 1981 census report for Rawalpindi District, 85.1% of households had Punjabi as mother tongue. In any census, only a small number of major languages have been counted separately, and there has not been a separate option available for either Pahari or Pothwari.
4. One language activist from the diaspora in Britain "[has] said that he does not give the language a single name because those who speak the language call it many different things." (Lothers & Lothers 2012, p. 3).
5. Some, at least in the British diaspora, consider this term to be a misnomer if applied to the language. (Lothers & Lothers 2012, p. 3).
6. The similarity between wordlists containing 217 items of basic vocabulary from each location. (Lothers & Lothers 2010, pp. 15–16)

References

1. "Pahari". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
2. Shackle 1979, pp. 200–201.
3. Masica 1991, p. 440.
4. Shackle 1983, p. 183.
5. Shackle 1979, p. 201: Pothohari "is often so close to Panjabi that any attempt to maintain the Lahndi scheme ought probably to reckon it as 'Lahndi merging into Panjabi'."
6. Lothers & Lothers 2010, p. 2.
7. Lothers & Lothers 2010, p. 86. Speakers from Muzaffarabad "consider the Mirpur dialect different enough that it is difficult to understand."
8. The alternative English spellings are from Ethnologue (2017).
9. Abbasi & Asif 2010, p. 201.
10. Grierson 1919, p. 432.
11. Lothers & Lothers 2010, pp. 2–3, 19, 112.
12. Lothers & Lothers 2012, pp. 12, 26. At least in terms of lexical similarity..
13. Lothers & Lothers 2010, pp. 2–3, 5, 19, 100.
14. Lothers & Lothers 2010, p. 44.
15. Shackle 2007, p. 114.
16. Lothers & Lothers 2012, p. 1.
17. Hussain 2015, pp. 483–84.
18. Lothers & Lothers 2010, p. 23.
19. Lothers & Lothers 2010, pp. 2, 5.
20. Abbasi 2010, p. 104.
21. Hindko according to Lothers & Lothers (2010, pp. 5, 39) and Dhundi according to Grierson (1919, p. 495). Pahari is reported in both sources.
22. Lothers & Lothers 2010, pp. 40, 126–27. The speakers of Pahari in Abbottabad District regard the Hindko of the city of Abbottabad as a different language.
23. Lothers & Lothers 2010, pp. 2, 40.
24. Lothers & Lothers 2010, pp. 2, 5, 8.
25. Grierson 1919, p. 505.
26. Grierson 1919, p. 505 and corresponding map.
27. Abbasi 2010, p. 104; Abbasi & Asif 2010, pp. 201–202
28. Lothers & Lothers 2010, sec. 3.1. The varieties surveyed here are from Bagh and Muzaffarabad.
29. Lothers & Lothers 2010, p. 24. The wordlists that form the basis of this comparison are from the variety of Neela Butt.
30. Lothers & Lothers 2010, pp. 24–25.
31. Lothers & Lothers 2010, pp. 26, 80.
32. Lothers & Lothers 2010, pp. 108, 110.
33. Lothers & Lothers 2010, p. 24.
34. Lothers & Lothers 2010, p. 26; Akhtar & Rehman 2007, p. 68. The conclusion is similarly based on lexical similarity and the comparison is with the Hindko of the Kaghan Valley on one hand and with the Pahari of the Murre Hills on the other.
35. A 2000 estimate reported in Ethnologue (2017)
36. Singh 2014, p. 18; Bhat 2014, ch. 1, pp. 38, 40
37. Lists of regions and settlements are found in Bhat (2014, ch. 1, pp. 40, 43–44) and Kour (2014).
38. (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-09-03. Retrieved 2020-04-29.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
39. Kaul 2006, pp. 42, 256–8.
40. Kogan, Anton I. (2011). Potxoxari Jazyk. Tatiana I. Oranskaya and Yulia V. Mazurova and Andrej A. Kibrik and Leonid I. Kulikov and Aleksandr Y. Rusakov (eds.), Jazyki Mira: Novye Indoarijskie Jazyki: Moskva: Academia. pp. 516–527.
41. Khan, Abdul Qadir (2013). A Preliminary Study of Pahari Language and its Sound System. pp. 1–20.

Bibliography

• 1981 District Census Report of Rawalpindi. District census Report. Vol. 44. Islamabad: Population Census Organization, Statistics Division, Government of Pakistan. 1984. p. 95.
• Abbasi, Muhammad Gulfraz (2010). "Is It a Language Worth Researching?". Language in India. 10 (7).
• Abbasi, Muhammad Gulfraz; Asif, Saiqa Imtiaz (2010). "Dilemma of Usage and Transmission-A Sociolinguistic Investigation of Dhundi-Pahari in Pakistan". Language in India. 10 (5): 197–214. ISSN 1930-2940.
• Akhtar, Raja Nasim; Rehman, Khawaja A. (2007). "The Languages of the Neelam Valley". Kashmir Journal of Language Research. 10 (1): 65–84. ISSN 1028-6640.
• Baart, Joan L. G. (2003). Sustainable Development and the Maintenance of Pakistan's Indigenous Languages. Islamabad.
• Bhat, Javeed Ahmad (2014). Politics of Reservations: A Comparative Study of Gujjars and Paharis of Jammu and Kashmir (PhD). Aligarh Muslim University. hdl:10603/167183.
• Grierson, George A. (1919). Linguistic Survey of India. Vol. VIII, Part 1, Indo-Aryan family. North-western group. Specimens of Sindhī and Lahndā. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India.
• Hussain, Serena (2015). "Missing From the 'Minority Mainstream': Pahari-speaking Diaspora in Britain". Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. 36 (5): 483–497. doi:10.1080/01434632.2014.953539. ISSN 0143-4632. S2CID 55100616.
• Kaul, Pritam Krishen (2006). Pahāṛi and Other Tribal Dialects of Jammu. Vol. 1. Delhi: Eastern Book Linkers. ISBN 8178541017.
• Kour, Updesh (2014). "Punchi". In Devy, G. N.; Koul, Omkar N. (eds.). The Languages of Jammu & Kashmir. People's linguistic survey of India. Vol. 12. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. pp. 261–78. ISBN 978-81-250-5516-7.
• Lothers, Michael; Lothers, Laura (2010). Pahari and Pothwari: A Sociolinguistic Survey (Report). SIL Electronic Survey Reports. Vol. 2010–012.
• Lothers, Laura; Lothers, Michael (2012). Mirpuri Immigrants in England: A Sociolinguistic Survey. SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2012. SIL International.
• Masica, Colin P. (1991). The Indo-Aryan languages. Cambridge language surveys. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-23420-7.
• 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.
• Shackle, Christopher (1983). "Language, Dialect and Local Identity in Northern Pakistan". In Wolfgang-Peter Zingel; Stephanie Zingel-Avé Lallemant (eds.). Pakistan in Its Fourth Decade: Current Political, Social and Economic Situation and Prospects for the 1980s. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Orient-Instituts. Vol. 23. Hamburg: Deutsches Orient-Institut. pp. 175–87.
• Shackle, Christopher (2007). "Pakistan". In Simpson, Andrew (ed.). Language and National Identity in Asia. Oxford linguistics Y. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-922648-1.
• Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2017). "Pahari-Potwari". Ethnologue (20 ed.). (access limited).
• Singh, Kuljit (2014). Identity Formation and Assertion: A Study of Pahari Speaking Community of Jammu and Kashmir (PhD). University of Jammu. hdl:10603/78359.

Further reading

• Karnai, Mian Karim Ullah (2007). Pahari aor Urdu: ik taqabali jaiza (in Urdu). Islamabad: National Language Authority.
• Nazir, Farah (2014). Light Verb Constructions in Potwari (PhD). University of Manchester.

External links

• Pahari Language Textbook for Class2
• Pahari Language Textbook for Class3
• Pahari Language Textbook for Class4
• Pahari Language Textbook for Class5
• Pahari Language Textbook for Class6
• Pahari Language Textbook for Class8 (Part A)
• Pahari Language Textbook for Class8 (Part B)

 

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