Potwari Language - Written Potwari

Written Potwari

Written Potwari is based on a variety of standard dialects of northern Lahnda as written by Sir George Gierson in his LSI. It is widely spoken in the northern parts of Pakistan and in Kashmir; significant places are Rawalpindi and Mirpur. It is semi-officially written and Perso-Arabic standardised orthography is utilised. Speakers literate in Urdu often write mostly in Perso-Arabic style and do not sometimes regard Potwari as a literary language. When in some cases Potwari is written, the Perso-Arabic orthography is utilised or it is written in Roman Potwari, which is used for the writing of Urdu in Roman script. This is largely the case in the UK where a large percentage of Pahari-Potohari speakers reside, who are found to constitute the majority of the expatriate Pakistani (from the Potohar plateau e.g. Gujar Khan, Rawalpindi, Kahuta etc.) and Jammu & Kashmiri communities. Pahari-Potohari is widely spoken and is used in many traditional poems due to its richness, the most famous of which is by the poet Mian Muhammad Bakhsh, whose poetry is still performed and enjoyed to this present day in Punjab region and Azad Kashmir. Potwari is an interestingly unique dialect that has some resemblance and close relations to Punjabi, but more interestingly has Pashto inflections to the soundings of the words.

It is not the case that Potwari has never been written; during the Buddhist reign Potwari was written using the Laṇḍā script which evolved from the Sharada script. Sharada was invented in the Buddhist university of the same name located in the Neelam Valley in modern-day Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Presently, the Perso-Arabic script is standard and has been since the Mughal rule. Potwari has a rich oral tradition, which has been passed down from generation to generation and is used in many famous poems. This is by and large due to the rampant illiteracy in the communities that use Potwari as their dialect, which may be due to labour trends/tradition, personal choice or lack of facilities and establishments in the past.

Pahari is also a term used for a language in the Himachal Pradesh region of Northern India. It must be noted that the Pahari-Potohari language is incomprehensible with this dialect.