Hindko Language - History and Origin

History and Origin

During the pre-Islamic era in present day Pakistan, the language of the masses was refined by the ancient grammarian Pāṇini, who set the rules of an ancient language called Sanskrit which was used principally for Hindu scriptures (analogous to Latin in the Western world). Meanwhile, the vernacular language of the masses, Prakrit developed into many tongues and dialects which spread over the northern parts of South Asia. Hindko is believed to be closely related to Prakrit. It has undergone very little grammatical corruption, but has borrowed considerable vocabulary from its neighbours, in particular Pashto. It shows close affinity to Lahnda sub-group of Indo-Aryan tongues and can be sub-divided into a northern and southern dialect (the southern dialect shows some similarity with Saraiki as opposed to Punjabi). The language is mutually intelligible with other Lahnda dialects such as Pothwari.