Lahnda

Lahnda (Punjabi: Laehndā, pronounced [lɛ˦n.d̪äː], lit. 'western'), also known as Lahndi or Western Punjabi, is a group of Indo-Aryan language varieties, spoken in the Punjab, Hazara, and Azad Kashmir regions 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 linguistic genetic grouping is not certain. The terms "Lahnda" and "Western Punjabi" are exonyms employed by linguists, and are not used by the speakers themselves. Lahnda includes the following languages and dialects: Saraiki (spoken mostly in southern Pakistani Punjab by about 26 million people); the Jatki languages (spoken in the Bar region of Central 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 (with 3.5 million speakers predominantly on the Pothohar Plateau of northern Punjab, as well as Azad Kashmir and parts of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir); Khetrani (transitional with Sindhi, 20,000 speakers in Balochistan); and Inku (a possibly extinct language of Afghanistan). Ethnologue also subsumes under Lahnda a group of varieties that it labels as "Western Punjabi" (ISO 639-3 code: pnb) – the Majhi dialects transitional between Lahnda and Eastern Punjabi; these are spoken by about 66 million people. Glottolog, however, regards only the Shahpuri, Dhanni and Jatki dialects as "Western Punjabi" within the "Greater Panjabic" family, distinguishing it from the Lahnda language varieties ("Hindko-Siraiki" and "Paharic").