Pothohari dialect

Pothohari
Potwari, Potowari
پوٹھوہاری
Native to	Pakistan, India
Region	Pothohar region, Azad Kashmir and Poonch (Jammu and Kashmir)
Native speakers	2.5 million including Dhundi-Kairali, Chibhali, & Punchhi, but perhaps not 1.04 million Mirpuri (2007)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan North-Western Zone Western Punjabi (Lahnda) Pothohari
Language codes
ISO 639-3	phr (includes other dialects)
Glottolog	paha1251  (Pahari Potwari)[2] mirp1238  (Mirpur Panjabi)[3]
Punjabi–Lahnda dialects. Pothohari is center-north.

Pothohari (پوٹھوہاری), Pahari-Potowari, or Potwari is a dialect of Western Punjabi ^[4] spoken by inhabitants of the Pothohar Plateau in northern Punjab and in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan and Poonch of Jammu and Kashmir, India.

Potohar scenery with pahar backdrop

Classification

Since Punjabi, Urdu/Hindi are spoken in a region that has witnessed significant ethnic and identity conflict, all have been exposed to the dialect versus language question. Each of these languages possesses a central standard on which its literature is based, and from which there are multiple dialectal variations.^[5]

It had been historically classified as dialect of Punjabi. In the 1920s, Garrison in his Linguist Survey of India classified into Northern cluster of Western Punjabi . Recently Potowari is claimed as language contrasting the view of being a dialect of Punjabi, However these claims are controversial to date. ^{[6]:838 [7]:46}

References

1. Pothohari at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Pahari Potwari". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
3. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Mirpur Panjabi". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
4. Colin P. Masica, 1991, The Indo-Aryan Languages
5. Bailey, Rev. T. Grahame. 1904. Panjabi Grammar. Lahore: Punjab Government Press.
6. Rahman, Tariq. 1997. Language and Ethnicity in Pakistan. Asian Survey, 1997 Sep., 37(9):833-839.
7. Javaid, Umbreen. 2004. Saraiki political movement: its impact in south Punjab. Journal of Research (Humanities), 40(2): 55–65. Lahore: Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of the Punjab. (This PDF contains multiple articles from the same issue.)

External links

• Miki Kharo England - GeoPakistani
• Pahari.org
• Jumtree.co.uk, examples of Potwari Sher (sung poetry)