Pahari-Pothwari

Pahari Pothwari is a Lahnda dialect group within the Punjabi group of the Indo-Aryan language family, spoken in the northern half of Pothohar Plateau in Punjab, Pakistan, as well as in the most of Pakistan-administered Azad Kashmir and in the western areas of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. It 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 group is transitional between Hindko and Majhi-based 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 all Lahnda varieties, and standard Punjabi are "dialects" of a "greater Punjabi" macrolanguage.