LAHNDA

Lahnda language, also called Jatki, or Western Panjabi, language belonging to the western group of Indo-Aryan languages and spoken mainly in the western Punjab and Pakistan. One of the most important of its numerous dialects is Multani. Lahnda has a large number of Persian and Arabic loanwords and shares features with Kashmiri and Sindhi. There is little recorded literature in the language. The Muslims use the Persian form of the Arabic script to write Lahnda; the Hindus use the Lahnda script.

History

Lahnda (also Landa) was a Brahmi-derived script used in the Punjab and Sindh regions of what are now India and Pakistan from around the 10th to the early 20th centuries. The script was known as a merchants' script, although it was also used for literature and administrative purposes. Despite being widely used, Lahnda was never standardized, nor its regional variants unified, so there is significant variation in the styles used in different areas. The many varieties are sometimes classified into two broad groups, 'Punjabi' and 'Sindhi'.

The script has now been supplanted by Arabic and Devanagari writing, although its successor, the Gurmukhi script, is widely used throughout the Punjab.

Number of speakers

Lahnda has about 82,659,300 speakers in the world.

Dialects

The varieties of Lahnda are

·         Saraiki

·         A problematic group of northern dialects wanting a linguistic survey, including Dhanni–Sawain (Sohain), Hindki of Hazara(Kagani), Tinauli, Dhundi-Kairali, Chibhali, Punchhi, and Potwari

·         Hindko proper.

Reference

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/327943/Lahnda-language

http://www-01.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=lah

http://www.ethnologue.com/language/lah

http://scriptsource.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=script_detail&uid=hf234d8ehe