Talk:Lahnda

Eastern Punjabi

Eastern Punjabi is not a lahnda language? What is meant with eastern Punjabi? The dialect of East Punjab [India]? As far as I know this forms also a part of western Punjabi. This article need to be improved. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.223.185.47 (talk) 08:18, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

No Local Currency

The Lahnda languages are an Indo-Aryan languages dialect continuum spoken in western Panjab. The term has no local currency; it was devised by linguists to distinguish these dialects from Panjabi to the east; previously they had been known as Western Panjabi and Eastern Panjabi, respectively. Southern varieties locally called Siraiki and northern varieties called Hindko are being cultivated as literary languages to rival Pakistani Panjabi. On these reasons this Article be merged in Saraiki Language. The term has no local currency. Local call this Saraiki language. So this be renamed as Saraiki languages yes this be merged with Saraiki language.182.186.6.181 (talk) 14:06, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

added interwiki

• (cur | prev) 06:38, March 6, 2013‎ PLA y Grande Covián (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (6,647 bytes) (+256)‎ . . (I've added interwiki: ar:, ca:, es:, fr:, ja:, ko:, la:, no:, pl:, ru:, ur:__ .)

I know that today at enWikipedia there is a new method to edit interwiki, not at the usual wiki code. But with wikidata. I only know today the old process. --PLA y Grande Covián (talk) 09:54, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Gojri Dialect

How many people think that Gujri should also be catogarised in Lahnda? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robinuthapa (talk • contribs) 12:23, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Consistant Moves with out any logic reverted. This name of article is more realistic and allows better understanding about a controversial classification,

Robinuthapa moved page Lahnda language to Lahnda Western Punjabi: Name was First introduced by Grierson as Western Punjabi, Still Majority of locals consider them self Punjabi because it is a dialect of Punjabi being Fully intengible & not aware of what Lahnda is. This article be moved to Saraiki language.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Robinuthapa (talk • contribs) 18:02, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Not transitional between Sindhi and Punjabi

How can Hindko and Potowari miles away from sindhi be transitional between Punjabi and Sindhi. Only Saraiki has very few Sindhi words because Arabs invaded Sindh and South Punjab up to Multan and made MUltan capital of Sindh that is why Multani / Saraiki contains few Arabic and Sindhi words. Robinuthapa (talk) 18:09, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Possible move

@Kwamikagami: I feel that this article should be moved to Lahnda dialect or more precisely Lahnda dialects, since it's just a group of dialects of Punjabi and a bit of Sindhi that are transitional, not necessarily a language in its own right. Filpro (talk) 00:41, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

But Lahnda is posited as a language, those western bits which aren't intelligible with Punjabi proper. — kwami (talk) 01:23, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

There isn't a "Punjabi proper" in Punjab if you're suggest that Majhi dialect = Punjabi. It's like saying Standard Mandarin is Mandarin proper and all other Mandarin dialects form a separate language. Is Low German considered a different language? Dialects of Punjabi like Saraiki are mutually intelligible to Majhi (standard Punjabi) according to the article. Lanhda (meaning "western" in Punjabi) is a dialect cluster of West Punjab to be even more precise.Filpro (talk) 01:58, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Low German is a very distinct language (or possibly even group of languages) from Standard German. The differences there a very pronounced. Even within High German, the differences are such that there are a number of languages distinct from Standard German. I don't know about Lahnda–Punjabi, but I must note that neither this article nor Punjabi language say anything about the mutual intelligibility between Lahnda and other Punjabi varieties, nor internally. --JorisvS (talk) 13:51, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

@JorisvS: @Kwamikagami: I know you both are very good language article editors and extremly professional editors. I agree with @Filpro: all westren punjabi dialects + Dogri + Westren Pahari are mutually intelligible with Eastren Punjabi (Standard). These diffrent dialect speakers never use urdu for intercommunication. In Pakistan last census 1998 17 districts (Rawalpindi, Jehlum, Attock, CHakwal, Sargodha, Mianwali, Khushab, Mandi Bahudin, Hafizabad, Sahiwal, Okara, Pak pattan, Vehari, Bahawalnagar, Khanewal, Jhang, Toba Taksingh) who as per linguist speak western Punjabi chose Punjabi as their language, rather then Politicaly motived Saraiki/ Hindko/Potwari/Pahari options. Political motivation is linked with a background. In Pakistan their is a bias against North Punjab which include all above mentioned western Punjabi 17 districts plus 8 Proper Punjabi distrcits. Reason being these areas are economically rich with industry and agriculture. Westren Punjabi speakers of South Punjab (9 districts) think themselves poor due to North Punjab and have started a new province campaign by distinting them selve as Saraiki. Similerly Hindko dialect speaker 5 districts in KPK province live with Pashtun and Pashtun call them Punjabi and ask them to go back to Punjab province so in response they claim a seprate province as Hindko language speakers. Pashtun hatred against Punjabi has forced Hindko minority claiming themselves as aboriginals speaking Hindu kush mountain language (Hindko) to distinguish them selve from Punjabi label. Same applies with Dogri and Pahari speakers of Kashmir whom kashmiri call Punjabi and ask them to go back to Punjab so in response they have labelled them selves as aboriginals speaking Dogri and Pahari languages. If you check this table you will be clear that all these Hindko Pahari Saraiki Dogri people for centuries declared themselves as Punjabi in Censuses.

@Kwamikagami: Nonetheless, Low German is still part of German language but still separate from Standard German. The same way Lahnda dialects are for Punjabi language. I believe the current title is misleading at best. There should also be an article for Standard Punjabi. (which is based on the Majhi dialect) This map is pretty accurate:

Census history of major languages

Rank	Language	1998 census	1981 census	1961 census	1951 census
1	Punjabi*	44.15%	48.17%	56.39%	57.08%
2	Pashto	15.42%	13.35%	8.47%	8.16%
3	Sindhi	14.1%	12.7%	12.59%	12.85%
4	Saraiki*	10.53%	9.54%
5	Urdu	7.57%	7.60%	7.57%	7.05%
6	Balochi	3.57%	3.02%	2.49%	3.04%

{* Saraiki and Hindko was included with Punjabi in the 1951 and 1961 censuses.}

Let me clear u the minor diffrences between Punjabi (proper) and Western Punjabi. I am calling them minor bcoz all words and sentence are same with following cosmatic diffrences; These diffrences are mainly due to urdu effecting either of them. Even these diffrences do not make them un intelligible bcoz both dialect speakers understand urdu being national language. EXAMPLES are as follows

• Eastern Punjabi uses Urdu Future tence suffix 'gay' while in western it is 'say'.

• Western Punjabi just like Urdu has no tones But Eastern has tones. I mean if u read same sentence in singing style this is called as eastren Punjabi

• Westren Punjabi never uses play conversions like urdu but standard punjabi do this like germen i.e. BH= p JH=ch GH=k e.g. BHERA (west Punjabi) = PERA (East Punjabi).

• Hindko Potowari Pahari and Dogri have limited Kashmiri vocablary borrowing while saraiki has Sindhi borrowings like it uses implosive (breath in) ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ while other Punjabi dialects use normal b d f g like urdu.

Example of hatred against Punjabi by Pashtun editors see article Karachi . Pashtun editors want to show Pashto speakers are more then Punjabi speakers so they have got page protection and added these misleading numbers in third column (2011) from a single unreliable source of a unknown friday news paper in which a pashtoon journalist with out any recent census of 20 million city, declares pashtun 25%, against 10% in last official census. Interestly, friday times writer has claimed Pashtun 7 million. Then using mathmatics we get karachi population 28 million (which is a hyper exagerated figure not supported by any source, maximum estimate of karachi population is 20 million as per few sources. See this table as currently being ENFORCED in Karachi article.

Rank	Language	2011 estimate	1998 census	Speakers	1981 census	Speakers
1	Urdu	45%	48.52%	4,497,747	54.34%	2,830,098
2	Pashto	25.02%	11.42%	981,000	8.71%	453,628
3	Punjabi		13.94%	1,292,335	13.64%	710,389
4	Sindhi	7%	7.22%	669,340	6.29%	327,591
5	Balochi		4.34%	402,386	4.39%	228,636
6	Saraiki		2.11%	195,681	0.35%	18,228
	Others		12.44%	1,153,126	12.27%	639,560
	All	100%	100%	9,269,265	100%	5,208,132

39.47.149.39 (talk) 17:23, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

References

Proper topic of article

Before this move from July, the article's title used to contain the term Lahnda. And it was clear that the topic was the group of language varieties that goes by this name (see ethnologue entry for "Lahnda"). While Western Punjabi (which is the current title) is often used as a synonym for that, it also has another meaning. It can refer to the standard variety of Punjabi used in Pakistan. That's the meaning I see in the ethnologue entry for "Western Punjabi" as well as in the name of the Western Punjabi wikipedia.

Which of these two is the proper topic of the article? How could its title better reflect that? – Uanfala (talk) 17:23, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

First time in history Grierson used term Western Punjabi and for local use he translated it to Lahnda which mean western in Punjabi. so topic of article is western Punjabi a common English name. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 39.50.86.210 (talk) 18:25, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

• As the topic is (and seems to have always been) the language group ("Lahnda"), I think it's best to resolve the ambiguity by moving back to Lahnda and turning Western Punjabi into a disambiguation page containing entries for Lahnda and for whatever article covers the Standard Punjabi of Pakistan (at present, that seems to be Punjabi language). Any thoughts? – Uanfala (talk) 12:18, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Then may be we have to change name of Western Punjab to Lahndistan ? Oh really ? I Oppose — Preceding unsigned comment added by 39.50.86.210 (talk) 16:15, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 13 August 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved DrStrauss talk 17:33, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

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Western Punjabi → Lahnda – Partially reverting the undiscussed move from last year. The article is about a linguistically defined group of languages that has been equally often referred to as Landa and as Western Punjabi. The latter term however has taken on a new set of meanings in the last decade or so, and can now refer either to the language group ( = Lahnda, the topic of the current article), or more broadly to the whole set of Punjabi varieties spoken in Pakistan (whether Lahnda or not), or narrowly to the Pakistani variety of Standard Punjabi (itself not belonging to Lahnda). This ambiguity has resulted in no end of confusion since the move, evident in the article's editing history. Just noting that I don't think it should be moved to either of its exact previous titles of Lahnda language or Lahnda languages (which it has oscillated between) – the former is a misnomer, the latter sounds awkward, and neither is common in current usage. – Uanfala 01:11, 13 August 2017 (UTC) --Relisting. Steel1943 (talk) 04:19, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support per nom. However, is the Pothwari dialect classified as Lahnda? Or is Lahnda only limited to Hindko and Saraiki dialect? This must be clarified in this article using reliable references. Khestwol (talk) 11:32, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
  • All classifications I've seen treat Pothwari as part of Lahnda, but the boundary between Lahnda and Eastern Punjabi is a rather fuzzy one, so it's not surprising that Shackle (in the 1979 paper linked in the article) should write that Pothwari "is often so close to Panjabi that any attempt to maintain the Lahndi scheme ought probably to reckon it as 'Lahndi merging into Panjabi'." I've been thinking of creating a composite map of the various ways Lahnda has been delineated in the literature, but I don't really know when I'll have the time to get around to that. – Uanfala 15:33, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
    • We might as well put Pothwari into Eastern Punjabi then. Currently there is no article exclusively for Eastern Punjabi. If there was, I don't know if it would claim Pothwari as Eastern Punjabi. Also, there is a problem with "Pahari-Pothwari", a main language in Azad Kashmir. Is Pahari-Pothwari a dialect of Pothwari or a dialect of Pahari languages? Interesting, both these articles (Pothwari, and Pahari languages) seem to claim Pahari-Pothwari as their own dialect. Both can't be true. Khestwol (talk) 16:29, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support. I came across this edit request recently, which was turned down due to lack of consensus. There was also Ethnologue, a 2017 source that shows the #10-ranked Lahnda as the header name of a language group that includes Northern Hindko, Pahari-Potwari, Saraiki and Western Punjabi. So it's time for us to accept that the documents of the 19th and 20th centuries have been updated, and that Lahnda is now considered by linguistic scientists as the cover name for W. Punjabi, et al. I also agree with the proposer, Uanfala, that both "language" and "languages" are, in this case, misleading and unnecessary disambiguation for the term "Lahnda".  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  14:57, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Refactor of page to Lahandi

I am making a note here since the changes I am making are quite substantial, but I am updating the article to further disambiguate the subject matter this article refers to, made clear by the move proposal above. There are multiple ways in which the terms "Lahnda" or "Lahandi" have been used, but the historical uses of the term by language surveyors such as George A. Grierson, the use of the term by the ISO 639 standard as a "macrolanguage," and the use of the term "Western Punjabi" as synonymous with Shahmukhi or Punjabi in Pakistan all differ from the subject of this article, which is the discernable differences in language between western and eastern regions of Punjab broadly (not related at all to current political boundaries, not justified by Grierson and writers prior, and not cited by SIL/ISO). To that end, I am changing the article title to Lahandi, as Bhardwaj's Punjabi: A Comprehensive Grammar explains, Lahandi is the preferred term by Indian linguistics as the grammatical gender for language in Punjabi is feminine, while Lahnda implies a masculine gender. I am also removing the ISO 639 identifiers from the infobox as there is no evidence that they can be understood as referring to the same subject, especially considering they regard Lahnda as a separate "macrolanguage" having a different lineage from Punjabi as opposed to being a subclass of the Punjabi language. It is possible the ISO 639 macrolanguage merits its own article, but sources on that specific topic are less comprehensive and often unreliable due to conflation of differing concepts, so that information would likely be better suited as an item in a larger list article. --Middle river exports (talk) 19:45, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

You must seek consensus before making such page moves, especially that it's obvious from this page that the article title has been intensely discussed in the past. I've restored the established title. As to other issues you bought up, I'm not certain Bhardwaj's assertion should be given more weight than all the other sources referred to in the article. Please discuss. — kashmīrī ^TALK 00:43, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

I am open to discussion, I made the change in the interest of causing less confusion as I updated the content of the page but intended to elaborate if anybody took issue. It also seems in line with the intent of the consensus reached above. Bhardwaj's assertion is not his own original one; in fact some of the sources already referred to in the article use Lahandi or Lahndi as the spelling under the same justification. Specifically, Masica (1991), already cited on the page:

Grierson bestowed the name "Lahnda" (from a Punjabi word for "western") on them collectively as a distinct "language". This has caught on only among linguists (who later began to prefer the feminine form Lahndi, matching the usual names of Indo-Aryan languages); it has no currency among the speakers themselves. It will accordingly be used here - for convenience , as there is no ready substitute - always in quotes. From page 18 of his work. He then goes on to use the term "Lahndi" when referring to the language of modern speakers, and "Lahnda" when referring to the erroneous historical classification.

And from Shackle (1979), also already cited on the page:

Grierson’s masculine was immediately challenged by Bailey on the sensible grounds that Indian language-names are usually feminine: the curious may care to consult the ensuing disputation in BSOS 5 (1928-30), 6158,883-7; 6 (193@-32), 273. Bailey’s objection has certainly been vindicated by later Panjabi usage, where Lahindi is the regular Gurmukhi form.

From page 210. Shackle, like Bhardawaj, is noting that he is citing the preference of multiple scholars before him here, rather than asserting a new statement.

Masica and Shackle are currently the most substantive references on the article. The Ethnologue source on Lahnda / Western Punjabi is not referring to the language group that is the subject matter of this article so it is less relevant; it also bears pointing out that Ethnologue is not a scholarly or linguistic source. (It is a private religious publication which isn't beholden to any kind of review.) I am hoping that in using the name Lahandi, which is used to refer to one concept, then it will be easier for other editors to stop conflating the different classifications.

I intend on citing Punjabi language sources on this matter as well, such as Duni Chandra (1964) - ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾ ਦਾ ਵਿਆਕਰਣ (Grammar of the Punjabi Language), which is still one of the few comprehensive linguistic works which attempts to provide a serious analysis of Punjabi variants. As far as I know, none of the Punjabi language scholars on this topic use Lahnda either. --Middle river exports (talk) 02:07, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

But as is clear from the quote above, Masica choses "Lahnda" as the form to use throughout his work. That's also the form used in the usual tertiary sources: Ethnologue, Glottolog or Encyclopedia Britannica (incidentally, that article was written by Shackle). "Lahndi" (which is more common than "Lahandi") is also in use, but it's a lot less frequently encountered than "Lahnda": see for example Google Scholar hits for Lahnda (878) vs. Lahndi (128). As for the potential for confusion, my own personal view is that there's more of it in "Lahndi" as that term is more likely to be misconstrued as the name of a language. – Uanfala (talk) 12:20, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

> But as is clear from the quote above, Masica choses "Lahnda" as the form to use throughout his work. That's

No, he uses both "Lahnda" and "Lahndi," the former to refer to the historical use of the term by Grierson et al., and the latter to refer to the modern use of the language.

The tertiary sources you mention are not subject to the editorial rigor of research on the topic.

>lot less frequently encountered than "Lahnda": see for example Google Scholar hits for Lahnda (878) vs. [1] (128).

As explained, part of the issue is that this article is about a specific use of the term Lahnda, but the word Lahnda is generic enough that there are articles about different topics that use it. So comparing Google Scholar hits does not apply here because not all of these articles are referring to the same thing. Because "lahnd*" simply means west, it would be grammatically correct to say "Lahnda Punjab" to describe "West Punjab." It is not grammatically correct, however, to say "Lahndi Punjab," or "Lahnda language." I am not sure what purpose preserving the grammatically incorrect form serves. The article will necessarily have to explain that it is grammatically incorrect, in order to explain the grammatical features of Lahndi Punjabi. --Middle river exports (talk) 17:51, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

I would just like to note that I appreciate your efforts here – the article is very rudimentary and it certainly needs a lot of work. I also agree that the "Lahndi" position has some merits. However, you're getting Masica wrong. In the passage you've quoted he explicitly writes that he's going to employ "Lahnda" (though admittedly that can be read as referring primarily to the concept rather than the spelling). But he does use the spelling with -a throughout: you can check in the index for instances of such use, or look at the relevant headings in the bibliography (p. 500) and the languages appendix (p.435). He consistently uses this spelling, even when referring to the work of linguists who opt for the other (e.g. p. 97). The usage you're describing – one when talking of Grierson's schemes, the other elsewhere – is what's found in Shackle 1979.

You can try constraining the Google Scholar results to filter out most non-language related hits; I've tried adding "linguistics" to search strings above, and I don't get a substantially different distribution of results. Or is your point that within the linguistic literature there are disparate meanings of the term? If that's the case, then would you mind elaborating? Yes, there have been various circumscriptions of this group of languages, but I'm not sure anyone would disagree with either the fact that this is indeed a group of languages (phylogenetically viable or not) or about the inclusion of its core members. The only other use I'm aware of, and one that I imagine should have become obsolete by now, is to refer to one or another specific language within that group. Or is there anything I'm missing here?

Now about your point that a phrase like "Lahnda Punjabi" wouldn't be grammatically correct in Punjabi. That sort of reasoning is applicable when we're talking about a people's own name for their language: all other things being equal, we'd go for the form that best matches that name. However, that's not what's going on here: the term isn't natively used either by the speakers or their neighbours. It's a term used in the linguistics literature to refer to a linguists' construct. When that literature is in English, then that use is not any less correct than using "Aryan" or "Dardic" is for language groups whose members don't have suffixes like -an or -ic. – Uanfala (talk) 19:02, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

To be clear, it is not true that most of the linguistic literature on this topic is in English - this is one of the first things I intend to make more clear in the article. While it is true that these dialectal distinctions in the language are not necessarily recognizable ones to most speakers, much of the substantive work on the topic has been by Indian and Pakistani linguists written in the Punjabi language. For example, Duni Chandra's 1964 book ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾ ਦਾ ਵਿਆਕਰਣ (Grammar of the Punjabi Language) offers an in depth analysis of variation within the language. If you take a look at it here, you can see how search results don't really show the full picture - scanned sources like this are not readily indexed by search engines. Further, even very recent papers are not easily found in search results due to the PDF format's inadequacy in supporting non-Latin Unicode scripts. This 2021 paper on Punjabi dialects is quite difficult to find through a search engine even using Shahmukhi search terms which match the content of the paper.

There are disparate meanings of the term both language-wise and non-language wise. I can elaborate from what I understand:

• Lahnda, as described by Grierson for the language survey of British India towards the beginning of the 20th century. This is relevant to bring up as a historical point because of the continued use of the term being attributed to his work, but his justification is entirely discredited. He held that there was a distinction between spoken Punjabi delineated along a west/east grouping on the basis of differences in vocabulary alone. However, in reality there is very little vocabulary difference between western and eastern dialects of Punjabi, and even if there was, that still would not be a justification on its own for distinguishing dialect. Grierson also held that western dialects of Punjabi had a different lineage from \'standard\' Punjabi, which is not correct.
• The dialectal differences in Punjabi can be delineated along a west/east grouping, but that is where the similarities with the above definition end. Bhardwaj in 'Panjabi: A Comprehensive Grammar' summarizes the most notable actual difference very succinctly: the western dialects preserve voiced aspirated consonants which were dropped from the eastern dialects. Most of the serious contemporary work on the subject focuses on distinctions like this, and this is the understanding which is most fitting to the subject matter of the article as it is the only one for which a legitimate, evidence-based case can be made for linguistically. Interestingly, speakers of eastern dialects still spell words in a way which reflects voiced aspirate consonants which they do not actually pronounce, while the Perso-Arabic based Shahmukhi script lacks a complete set of characters for these and instead relies on implicit pronunciation. My intent with using 'Lahandi' as the article name is in part to avoid it getting conflated with more misleading uses of the term, and because it is the term used in Punjabi research papers on the topic, and by writers in English who have taken the time to study Punjabi before writing about it.
• The "macrolanguage" notion of Lahnda as propagated by SIL International and in turn the ISO 639 standard, Glottolog, Ethnologue, etc. The pseudo-research produced by these organizations has unfortunately done a lot of damage in drowning out genuine information about the Punjabi language. This notion is different from both of those above in that it groups multiple rather arbitrary alleged variants under Lahnda, while asserting that eastern Punjabi dialects are both undifferentiated and of a different lineage. To further confuse things, this definition also seems insistent on attributing these languages to the current boundaries of Pakistan and India, however, the partition of India is far to recent to have any bearing on language differences, and existing dialects do not fall along the border of these countries. You can see an example of the type of distortion they do in this exchange with Charles Fennig, the managing editor of Ethnologue. For example, he asserts "Lahnda is specific for Western Punjabi [pnb] in Pakistan," then later erroneously cites Masica as supporting this notion. Masica however has explicitly pointed out why that assertion does not make sense, on page 20 of 'The Indo-Aryan Languages' he states: "the position of Punjabi in Pakistan in general has been strengthened by the large number of refugees from Eastern Punjab following Partition, as it had been earlier by the resettlements in the new Canal Colonies." (I will point out that it is in this broader passage where he uses "Lahndi" multiple times in the sense I am referring to, but he is also just one writer and I think it would be counterproductive to focus too much on arguing about his particular use of the terms.) The most absurd line Fennig offers here is "Perhaps part of the problem is that language speakers sometimes identify with larger ethnic groups, even though the languages that they speak are actually not closely related" - this heavily betrays his ignorance to the subject matter. Punjabi people by and large identify more readily with Punjabi as a group of language speakers more than they do an "ethnicity" to an extent that nobody would be able to offer a clear description of Punjabi people without describing language and geography. Implying that western and eastern dialects are somehow not closely related is also ridiculous for the simple fact that Punjabi speakers of different dialects talk to each other every day without noticing the differences. I myself did not realize that Punjabi as I was familiar with it included elements attributable to "western" dialects until yesterday. (Like many people of a Punjabi background, my family has lived in both "west" and "east" Punjab.) The variant of the personal pronoun ਤੂੰ tu as ਤੁਸਾਂ tusa in particular was something I was familiar with but would not have guessed to be a dialectal indicator, to give an example of how subtle the differences can be.
• Another example of a language term bearing the same name is Laṇḍā script, which refers to a 10th century writing system for Punjabi.
• For the sake of being comprehensive, an example of a non-language term is Lahndi (food), a dried meat dish prepared in western Pakistan.

To your statement "I'm not sure anyone would disagree with either the fact that this is indeed a group of languages (phylogenetically viable or not) or about the inclusion of its core members." - most would disagree with both of these statements. It is a group of dialects rather than languages, and while there have been various intra-region distinctions like 'Sargodha Punjabi,' there is no single list of dialects which can unambiguously be considered Lahandi. Hopefully the examples I gave of how fluid the language has been and how many speakers of western dialects omit sounds that are considered distinguishing of dialect make it easier to tell why that is. Trying to draw specific lines between the dialects and arrive at a consensus as to which ones comprise Lahandi would be a real challenge, and as far as I'm aware nobody actually familiar with the language and its dialects has succeeded in doing this. --Middle river exports (talk) 07:32, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

About your statement that people won't agree that the topic of the article is a group of languages. Whether you want to call the individual varieties "languages" or "dialects" is immaterial – either way the topic is a group of varieties. Yes, there are diverging opinions on where to place the eastern boundary of that group, but that's the sort of thing that should ideally get covered in this article: we aren't going to create separate articles for each writer's delimitation of Lahnda. The only version that's significantly different is found in the ISO 639 definition of code [lah]. But what's strange here is not the notion of a macrolanguage (that has analogues in the construal of Punjabi sensu lato by Shackle or Rahman), but the inclusion within it of [pnb], which seems to mostly represent the Eastern Punjabi varieties of Pakistan. This has apparently been done out of sociolinguistic expediency, and it would be difficult to find linguists who agree with it. Again, that's not worth creating a separate article for: a brief mention here should be enough. Also a quick note that Grierson's idea that Punjabi and Lahnda belong to different lineages, albeit controversial, has not been universally discredited: among the sources you've cited, you can have a look at some of the classifications in Masica's second appendix, as well as at the suggestion by Bhardwaj (2016:10) that the two may descend from different apabhramshas.

As for your view that there are no languages in Lahnda, only dialects... Are you aware that any definition of Lanhda will include Saraiki and Hindko? If yes, then that view is understandable provided you've only read the literature by Punjabi authors. Whether in Pakistan or in India, they have tended to espouse what is essentially the ethnonationalist view on the topic and have projected a single Punjabi language onto the whole region, treating all the Lahnda varieties as mere dialects of it. That's really well-known – among the sources you've quoted so far, you can check p. 197 of Shackle 1979. A separate limitation of much of the literature coming from the Indian side (after Partition) is that its source materials about Lahnda are often restricted to what's in the earlier publications, like those of Grierson or Bahri. That's why the work of Shackle, and – in recent years – by Pakistani linguists writing in Urdu or English – is so valuable: it's based on new fieldwork that fills in the gaping holes in the earlier coverage.

Back to the question about the article title. To quote from WP:AT: [a]rticle titles are based on how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject. Punjabi-language materials don't enter the equation when deciding how to name the article (though of course they can freely be used as sources for its content, while allowing for their biases on certain questions, as indicated above; this is similar to how you'd deal with writings by Saraiki or Hindko authors, who may on the other hand be prone to exaggerating the uniqueness or antiquity of their languages). – Uanfala (talk) 15:40, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Sorry but you are misinterpreting Bhardwaj here, when he is talking about the two different apabhramshas, he is not making a similar statement to Grierson as this is not a vocabulary-based distinction, and it also does not hold that western dialects are non-Indic in origin. The justification for Grierson's idea is demonstrably false, and as such it is accurate to simply describe it as discredited. There are three versions that are significantly different, Grierson's and the ISO 639 definitions do not necessarily merit their own articles but they are also not the subject of the article; the only reason to bring them up here is in explaining why they are incorrect. (By the way, de facto, pnb can only be understood to be used for Shahmukhi script broadly, with no implications about dialect. Take a look at this lexeme I have added to the Punjabi lexicographic data set on Wikidata for example, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Lexeme:L679438 . ਭਾਈ/بھائی and ਬਾਈ/بھائی are both valid dialectal forms of bhai, the Punjabi word for brother, but the Shahmukhi spelling is the same, and as such you would have no way of knowing in writing which form the writer uses. Gurmukhi in turn still makes omissions that make distinguishing dialect in writing difficult or impossible, even though it is less context-dependent than Shahmukhi. Notably, it is not consistent in indicating the presence of glottal stops or long vowels, and retains voiced aspirated in spelling even where speakers have dropped them from pronunciation. As far as the codes pa and pnb are used in practice online, including on Wikimedia, the only meaning these have ever taken on has been the script used.)

"Are you aware that any definition of Lanhda will include Saraiki and Hindko? If yes, then that view is understandable provided you've only read the literature by Punjabi authors. Whether in Pakistan or in India, they have tended to espouse what is essentially the ethnonationalist view on the topic and have projected a single Punjabi language onto the whole region, treating all the Lahnda varieties as mere dialects of it." This is not really true, much of the literature, in Punjabi and English makes primarily geographic distinctions rather than naming discrete varieties. Linguistic Atlas Of The Punjab (1973, in English, though that shouldn't matter) is one of the most cited works on the topic and simply breaks down dialectal distinctions by geography. It would also be inaccurate to describe Punjabi nationalism as an 'ethnonationalist' movement, or even to characterize the Punjabi-language linguists who have written on the subject as proponents of Punjabi nationalism.

"Punjabi-language materials don't enter the equation when deciding how to name the article." The key word in WP:AT here is reliable; most reliable English-language sources on the subject. Further, most contemporary Pakistani and Indian academics who have written on the topic are bilingual, and Pakistani English and Indian English are perfectly valid dialects of English to use on English Wikipedia. In fact, this very page has been marked with the template Template:Pakistani_English since 2016 if you look at the source (these English dialect templates are intended to facilitate consistency in writing style, and to continue to use Pakistani English forms and spellings of words would be in line with what other editors have started). I have started adding some of the resources I intend to cite in updating the article in the Further Reading section in this page, and if you read the 2020-2022 published articles on the topic, you can see that every recent article, in English, Punjabi, or Urdu from multiple institutions and scholars uses some form of Lahandi, Lehndi, or Lehandi. Per WP:TITLEVAR and WP:MPN, both facets of WP:AT, this is enough justification on its own to prefer this form on English Wikipedia. From WP:TITLEVAR:

If a topic has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation, the title of its article should use that nation's variety of English.

This topic does have strong ties to both India and Pakistan, which combined have more English-speakers than the United States. It is quite clear that Pakistani English and/or Indian English (practically, there is not much difference between the two which is why I am using them interchangeably here).

In WP:MPN it is explained clearly why the article for Mumbai is named as such even though most English-language literature prior to the 1990s refers to the city as Bombay. Even for countries which are not English users to the extent the Indian subcontinental nations are, spellings which reflect modern transliterations are preferred over antiquated romanizations, hence Nanjing rather than Nanking despite there being many English-language sources which use the latter spelling. The precedent explained in these guidelines is clear enough that I considered it warranted to make a WP:BOLD page move here, but it is still good we are discussing it now to make this clearer to other editors. Using Lahnda on the basis of interpretations of English-language writing from outside the region the topic is concerned with and from the 1970s or earlier would be as inconsistent as continuing to use Bombay and Nanking as article titles on English Wikipedia; I really do not see any good justification for it. --Middle river exports (talk) 17:34, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

If the usage has changed in recent years then that would be good reason to rename the article. But I'm not seeing that: repeating the Google Scholar searches above but constrained to publications from 2020 and later: 78 for "Lahnda", 14 for "Lahndi". TITLEVAR would be relevant if there were a distinct convention within the English of Pakistan (not India) for using the -i form. Is that the case? I brought up Bhardwaj as an example of a linguist talking of the separate lineage of Punjabi and Lahnda. No-one is suggesting that he follows the same model as Grierson (incidentally, I'm a bit puzzled by your suggestion about Grierson's views on a non-Indic origin; did you have in mind the Inner–Outer hypothesis instead?). – Uanfala (talk) 18:21, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

As stated earlier, using Google Scholar in this regard is not reliable for demonstrating relevance in reputable, recent sources. It does not include print material, such as Boota Singh Brar's 2022 edition of his Punjabi grammar text that I've started reading. (He also calls it Lahandi.) Many Pakistani and Indian research journals are also not indexed by Google Scholar at all (see the journal Khoj for example, or PILAC's periodical). At least one of those results for "Lahnda" is a high school essay and a number of them only bring it up as a passing mention rather than a topic of study - it's highly likely these uses reflect a combination of just using what the Wikipedia title says (very common) and the propagation of terms used in older sources (somewhat understandable for articles which are not about Lahandi Punjabi at all but just mention it).

It is the case that Pakistani/Indian English uses Lahandi, because what that dialect describes is one which incorporates features of the Indic languages spoken concurrently in the region. The reason I say Pakistani and Indian English speakers here is because there are no notable differences in convention between the two, and many speakers have lived in both countries. So there is simply no distinction to be insisted on. The few true Pakistan-only terms mostly have to do with government and politics. Further, you have to consider that standardized spelling is *not* a convention of South Asian English and that references are split between Lahendi, Lehendi, Lehndi, Lahandi, and Lahndi - so it's not surprising searching for just one spelling only comes up with some results. The default spelling isn't important so much as that it's pronounceable in a way that expresses grammatical agreement. (I also again remind you that Lahandi simply means "western." This is like searching "western" in Google Scholar and calling the number of results a reflection of the number of movies in the Western genre.)

Grierson viewed Punjabi as a Dardic language as opposed to Indo-Aryan, This is what meant when he said Grierson viewed Punjabi as non-Indic. Bhardwaj does not hold that Lahandi is of a separate lineage, but rather demonstrates the opposite - it's a more conservative grouping of dialects which retained features that were dropped in dialects to the east in the language's derivation from Sanskrit. So what's really going on is that Lahandi *appears* similar to other languages like Gujarati because it conserved some of the same features. This is a cognate relationship rather than a different lineage; it occurs because Punjabi of all dialects and Gujarati share a parent language. The remnants of features which were dropped in eastern Punjabi dialects can even be observed in sentence structures as the requisite complementary forms are still there.

In any case, I should have time to update the body of this article in the near future, and once that is done it should be much clearer why the page move is necessary. --Middle river exports (talk) 21:16, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Number of speakers

Hi @Uanfala, you wrote that: "as explained in the article text, Ethnologue uses a very wide definition of "Lahnda" that's at variance with virtually all sources"

What does Ethnologue include in Lahnda that should not? a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 13:40, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

What it calls "Western Punjabi" [pnb]. – Uanfala (talk) 13:53, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Glottolog seems to do the same: https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/lahn1241

And if "Western Punjabi" [pnb] is not part of Lahnda then why does the article start with "Lahnda [...] also known as Lahndi or Western Punjabi"?

Did I misunderstand something? a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 13:59, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Ah I've just seen your comment "the current version of Glottolog doesn't have a node for Lahnda; lahn1241 corresponds to our article". However, for Glottolog Greater Panjabic = Lahnda. You can use the search box or click on "Alternative names" to check it by yourself. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 14:00, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I doubt that's anything other than an artefact of Glottolog's classification changes. I don't think anyone has ever used "Lahnda" as a synonym for Punjabi(c). – Uanfala (talk) 14:07, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

The term "Western Punjabi" can be a synonym for "Lahnda" (Lahnda + Eastern Punjabi make up "Greater Punjabic"). But it can also refer to the varieties of Eastern Punjabi that are spoken in Pakistan, and that's what Ethnologue means by [pnb]. As for Glottolog, their classification changes every couple of years: what was once "Lahnda", lahn1241, has now been reused as the node for the whole of "Greater Punjabic". – Uanfala (talk) 14:05, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

OK, got it, thanks for taking the time to explain. I must say this is really not clear reading the article, but I assume it's not clear because the linguistic situation itself is not clear and we don't have great sources documenting it? a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 14:10, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Doesn't the last sentence of the lede sort of try to make that clear? If it doesn't, then we'd need to rewrite it. But yeah, there isn't a great deal of in-depth sourcing out there. – Uanfala (talk) 14:16, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

What isn't clear and could be worth adding in a footnote is that: "The term "Western Punjabi" can be a synonym for "Lahnda" (Lahnda + Eastern Punjabi make up "Greater Punjabic"). But it can also refer to the varieties of Eastern Punjabi that are spoken in Pakistan, and that's what Ethnologue means by [pnb]." Otherwise it's hard to understand that the group of varieties that [Ethnologue] labels as "Western Punjabi" is something different than Lahnda [...] also known [...] Western Punjabi. The page Majhi dialect also says nothing about Lahnda. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 15:01, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

@A455bcd9 I gave up trying to get it changed a long while ago, but the name Lahnda is not correct — Lahnda is a place name, the name of western Punjab (and at that, means west of Lahore, not Pakistani Punjab). (See the topic above this one; my username was different then.) The name for the western dialects is Lehndi.

Majhi has a number of features in common with Lehndi which distinguish it from other Charhdi (Eastern) dialects. Preservation of word final "r" in words like "puttar" and the use of pronominal suffixes in common with Lehndi for example. عُثمان (talk) 17:30, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

@Uanfala Given that Duni Chandar, the author of the most notable Punjabi grammar, was a Lehndi speaker, I do not think it is true that there is a lack of available sources. عُثمان (talk) 01:20, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Renaming to Lehndi revisited

Every reputable source on Punjabi describes this as Lehndi. What exactly are people looking for to allow correcting the name of this article? عُثمان (talk) 01:17, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 29 June 2024

2601:205:4686:6950:E0BE:B687:4471:6BE0 (talk) 10:07, 29 June 2024 (UTC)Change 'Hindko is considered a dialect of Lahnda...' to 'Hindko is considered a language distinct from Lahnda...'"

 Not done: The article doesn't say Hindko is considered a dialect of Lahnda anywhere. Jamedeus (talk) 23:02, 29 June 2024 (UTC)