Pahari-Pothwari

Pahari Pothwari is an Indo-Aryan language variety of the Lahnda group, spoken in the northern half of Pothohar Plateau, in Punjab, Pakistan, as well as in the most of Pakistan-administered Azad Kashmir and in the western areas of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. It is known by a variety of names, the most common of which are Pahari, and Pothwari.
The language is transitional between Hindko and standard Punjabi and is mutually intelligible with both. There have been efforts at cultivation as a literary language, although a local standard has not been established yet. The Shahmukhi script is used to write the language, such as in the works of Punjabi poet Mian Muhammad Bakhsh.
Grierson in his early 20th-century Linguistic Survey of India assigned it to a so-called "northern cluster" of Lahnda, but this classification, as well as the validity of the Lahnda grouping in this case, have been called into question. In a sense all Lahnda varieties, and standard Punjabi are "dialects" of a "greater Punjabi" macrolanguage.

Geographic distribution and dialects

There are at least three major dialects: Pothwari, Mirpuri and Pahari.
The dialects are mutually intelligible, but the difference between the northernmost and the southernmost dialects is enough to cause difficulties in understanding.

Pothohar Plateau

Pothwari, also spelt Potwari, Potohari and Pothohari, is spoken in the north-eastern portion of Pothohar Plateau of northern Punjab, an area administratively within Rawalpindi division. Pothwari is its most common name, and some call it Pindiwal Punjabi to differentiate it from the Punjabi spoken elsewhere in Punjab.
Pothwari extends southwards up to the Salt Range, with the city of Jhelum marking the border with Majha dialect. 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. In Attock and Talagang districts of Pothohar, it comes in contact with other Lahnda varieties, namely Chacchi, Awankari and Ghebi. In Chakwal, yet another dialect is spoken, Dhani.
Pothwari has been represented as a dialect of Punjabi by the Punjabi language movement, and in census reports the Pothwari areas of Punjab have been shown as Punjabi-majority.

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.
Locally it is known by a variety of names: Pahari, Mirpur Pahari, Mirpuri, and Pothwari, while some of its speakers call it Punjabi.
Mirpuris possess a strong sense of Kashmiri identity that overrides linguistic identification with closely related groups outside Azad Kashmir, such as the Pothwari Punjabis.
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.
The British Mirpuri diaspora now numbers several hundred thousand, and Pahari has been claimed to be the second most common mother tongue in the UK till replaced by Polish, yet the language is little known in the wider society there and its status has remained surrounded by confusion.

Kashmir, Murree and the Galyat

Pahari is spoken to the north of Pothwari. The central cluster of Pahari dialects is found around Murree. This area is in the Galyat: the hill country of Murree Tehsil in the northeast of Rawalpindi District and the adjoining areas in southeastern Abbottabad District. One name occasionally found in the literature for this language is Dhundi-Kairali, a term first used by Grierson who based it on the names of the two major tribes of the area – the Kairal and the Dhund. Its speakers call it Pahari in Murree tehsil, while in Abbottabad district it is known as either Hindko or Ḍhūṇḍī.
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. It forms a dialect continuum with Pahari, 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.
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, Chibhālī, named after the Chibhal region or the Chibh ethnic group, and Pahari . The latter name has been variously applied to either the Chibhali variety specific to the district of Poonch, or to the dialect of the whole northern half of Azad Kashmir.
This dialect has been seen either as a separate dialect from the one in Murree, or as belonging to the same central group of Pahari dialects. The dialect of the district of Bagh, for example, has more shared vocabulary with the core dialects from Murree than with the varieties of either Muzaffarabad or Mirpur.
In Muzaffarabad the dialect shows lexical similarity 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. The speakers however tend to call their language Hindko and to identify more with the Hindko spoken to the west, despite the lower lexical similarity with the core Hindko dialects of Abbottabad and Mansehra. Further north into the Neelam Valley the dialect, now known locally as Parmi, becomes closer to Hindko.
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, 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, and also – as a result of the influx of refugees during the Partition of 1947 – scattered throughout the rest of Jammu and Kashmir. Pahari is among the regional languages listed in the sixth schedule of the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir. 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", although not same they are closely related to Pahari–Pothwari.

Diaspora

Pahari Pothwari is also very widely spoken in the United Kingdom. Labour shortages after World War II, and the displacement of peoples caused by the construction of the Mangla Dam, facilitated extensive migration of Pahari-Pothwari speakers to the UK during the 1950s and 1960s, especially from the Mirpur District. Academics estimate that between two thirds and 80% of people officially classified as British Pakistanis originate as part of this diaspora, with some suggesting that it is the second most spoken language of the United Kingdom, ahead of even Welsh, with hundreds of thousands of speakers. However, since there is little awareness of the identity of the language among speakers, census results do not reflect this. The highest proportions of Pahari-Pothwari speakers are found in urban centres, especially the West Midlands conurbation and the West Yorkshire Built-up Area.

Phonology

Vowels

A long diphthong /ɑi/ can be realized as.

Consonants

Sounds are heard from Persian and Arabic loanwords.
is realized as voiced in word-initial position.
before a velar consonant can be heard as.
Morphology

Nouns

Case table

Extended masculine forms can be realised as being added the oblique forms ending in -e, which is shortened to -i- before back vowels and is lost before front vowels.
Notes:

Extended nouns generally end in -ā for masculine and -ī for feminine in the direct singular form
Oblique form

The numbers in their oblique form function the same throughout Punjabi dialects.

English	Pothohari	Jhangochi	Majhi
I got it for forty-four	میں ایہہ چُرتالیاں نا آندا آ	میں ایہہ چُرتالیاں دا آندا اے	میں ایہہ چوتالیاں دا آندا آ
above twenty-five or thirty	پنجِیاں ترِیہاں توں اپّر	پنجِیاں ترِیہاں توں اُتّے	پنجِیاں ترِیہاں توں اُتّے
after two or four days	دوَنہہ چَونہہ دیہاڑیاں بعد	دَونہہ چَونہہ دیہاڑیاں پِچھّوں	دَونہہ چَونہہ دیہاڑیاں پِچھّوں
at 8:46	اٹھّ چھتالیاں اپّر	اٹھّ چھتالیاں تے	اٹھّ چھتالیاں تے
for almost five lakh	پنجاں اِک لکھّاں نا	پنجاں اِک لکھّاں دا	پنجاں اِک لکھّاں دا
nearing twenty	وِیہاں نے نیڑے	وِیہاں دے نیڑے	وِیہاں دے نیڑے

Oblique case of nouns

Pahari-Pothwari has unique forms for nouns in oblique cases. This is not observed in standard Punjabi, but is seen in Hindko.

English	Pahari-Pothwari	Standard Punjabi
English	Shahmukhi	Shahmukhi
housework	گھرے نا کمّ	گھر دا کمّ
dinner	راتی نی روٹی	رات دی روٹی
in a young age	نِکّی عُمرے وِچ	نِکّی عُمر وِچّ
on my heart	مھاڑے دِلّے اپّر	میرے دِل تے
with care	دھیاݨے نال	دھیان نال
patiently	ارامے نال	ارام نال
to my sister	بھیݨُوں کی	بھین نُوں
for my brother	بھراُو واسطے	بھرا واسطے
important detail	کمّے نی گلّ	کمّ دی گلّ
there's no accounting for taste	شَونقے نا کوئی مُل نہیں ہوݨا	شَونق دا کوئی مُل نہیں ہوندا
understand the point	گلّے کی سمجھ	گلّ نُوں سمجھ