Pahari-Pothwari

Pahari-Pothwari is an Indo-Aryan language variety of Lahnda group, spoken on the Pothohar Plateau in the far north of Punjab, Pakistan, as well as in most of Pakistan-administered Azad Kashmir and in western areas of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, is known by a variety of names, the most common of which are Pahari (English: /pəˈhɑːri/; an ambiguous name also applied to other unrelated languages of India), and Pothwari (or Pothohari).

The language is transitional between Hindko and Standard Punjabi and is mutually intelligible with both. There have been efforts at cultivation as a literary language, although a local standard has not been established yet. The Shahmukhi script is used to write the language, such as in the works of Punjabi poet Mian Muhammad Bakhsh.

Grierson in his early 20th-century Linguistic Survey of India assigned it to a so-called "Northern cluster" of Lahnda (Western Punjabi), but this classification, as well as the validity of the Lahnda grouping in this case, have been called into question. In a sense both Pothwari, as well as other Lahnda varieties, and Standard Punjabi are "dialects" of a "Greater Punjabi" macrolanguage.

Due to effects of dominant languages in Pakistani media like Urdu, Standard Punjabi and English and religious impact of Arabic and Persian, Pahari-Pothwari like other regional varieties of Pakistan are continuously expanding its vocabulary base with loan words.