Pahari language

Pahari, or Pahadi ( 'of the hills/mountains'; ), is an encompassing term that has been used for a variety of languages, dialects and language groups, most of which are found in the lower Himalayas.

Most commonly, it refers to:

• Pahari-Pothwari, is a Lahnda dialect group within the Punjabi group spoken in Pakistan's northern Punjab, Pakistani Kashmir and Jammu and Kashmir.
• Western Pahari languages, group of languages spoken primarily in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, with some languages in the south-eastern parts of Indian Jammu and Kashmir, eastern parts of Uttarakhand and some hilly parts of Haryana.
• Northern Indo-Aryan languages, in the linguistics literature often referred to as "Pahari languages", a proposed group that includes the Indo-Aryan languages of Nepal and the Indian states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

Less commonly, Pahari may be:

• a term used by Dogri speakers of the plains to refer to the Dogri varieties spoken at higher elevations, in Indian Jammu and Kashmir,
• a name nowadays used only in rural areas to refer to the Nepali language,
• a local name for a Bhili dialect of Eastern Gujarat.

Pahari ( paharī) refers to:

• Pahari language (Sino-Tibetan), a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by a few thousand people in central Nepal.

Of similar origin is the name Paharia, which is used for several languages of east-central India: see Paharia language (disambiguation).

See also

• Pahari culture

References