Hindko and Gujari. c - SIL International
Hindko and Gujari. c - SIL International
Hindko and Gujari. c - SIL International
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6<br />
Calvin R. Rensch<br />
Reflecting these census figures, Addleton states that,<br />
“<strong>Hindko</strong> is the most significant linguistic minority in the NWFP,<br />
represented in nearly one-fifth (18.7 percent) of the province’s<br />
total households.” In Abbottabad District 92.3 percent of the<br />
households reported speaking <strong>Hindko</strong>, in Mansehra District 46.8<br />
percent, in Peshawar District 6.9 percent, <strong>and</strong> in Kohat District<br />
10.4 percent (1986:58-59).<br />
1.1.3 <strong>Hindko</strong>-speaking areas included in the study<br />
Word lists were collected from villages throughout the<br />
<strong>Hindko</strong>-speaking area in order to study lexical differences that<br />
distinguish one dialect from another, <strong>and</strong> levels of intelligibility<br />
among dialects were tested in representative dialects from the<br />
various areas of the <strong>Hindko</strong> region.<br />
Abbottabad <strong>and</strong> Mansehra districts within the Hazara<br />
Division of the North-West Frontier Province account for threefourths<br />
of all <strong>Hindko</strong>-speaking households. Abbottabad district<br />
includes over half of them <strong>and</strong> Mansehra district accounts for an<br />
additional one-fourth (Addleton 1986:70).<br />
It was in this area, where the <strong>Hindko</strong> population is<br />
concentrated, that studies were carried out in four communities<br />
to determine levels of second language proficiency of <strong>Hindko</strong><br />
speakers <strong>and</strong> those social factors which favor or inhibit their<br />
learning a second language.<br />
Although <strong>Hindko</strong> is also spoken by significant numbers of<br />
people in Attock District of the Panjab, Addleton (1986:78)<br />
reports only 1260 households (0.6 percent of those in the district)<br />
who give <strong>Hindko</strong> as their mother tongue in the census returns.<br />
There may be a significant distortion here due to the local use of<br />
more than one name for the same language (see below), or this<br />
may in part reflect the way the census questions were asked. (For<br />
a discussion of the way the language questions of the 1981<br />
census were framed, see Addleton 1986:56.)<br />
The scope of this study is defined largely as those<br />
communities where the people call their speech <strong>Hindko</strong>. In other<br />
words, the subjects were largely self-defined. In the southern part
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