Hindko and Gujari. c - SIL International

Hindko 7
of the area, however, are two dialects that require further
comment — one is a dialect included in this study which is not
called Hindko by its speakers and the other, a dialect not
included in this study which is called Hindko by some of its
speakers.
The dialect spoken in Talagang, Attock District, has been
included in this study. Shackle states that the speech of Talagang
tehsil is “most commonly called Avankari.” He includes it, along
with the dialects of Pindi Gheb (in Attock tehsil) and of Kohat, in
a grouping which he calls Hindko proper (1980:484-5). Bahri
(1962:xviii) says that the speech of Talagang is a dialect of
Avankari. However, during our field research in Talagang we
found no one who used the name Avankari to refer to the local
speech variety. Nor, for that matter, do the people themselves use
the term Hindko for that purpose. They call it simply Panjabi, 8
stating, however, that they recognize that their speech is more
similar to Hindko than it is to the Panjabi of Lahore and
Gujranwala. A speaker of Lahore Panjabi, interviewed in
Talagang, stated that the local speech is Hindko and not Panjabi,
and that he can understand but not speak the language of
Talagang. In spite of the terminological confusion surrounding
the name of the language of Talagang, this dialect was originally
included in this study because it was understood to be similar to
the Hindko of Attock tehsil to its north. Our studies of lexical
similarity and dialect intelligibility have subsequently confirmed
the appropriateness of this decision.
In Dera Ismail Khan District (NWFP) many people identify
themselves as speakers of Hindko. The man who provided the
word list for that locality said that the entire area is Hindkospeaking.
Several of his neighbors in his village, Himat, near the
town of Dera Ismail Khan, also stated that their language is
called Hindko. However, others in their area indicated that they
speak Siraiki and that there are no Hindko speakers in that area.
8 Viewing this language as (a dialect of) Panjabi appears to be a longstanding
tradition. Note a comment included in the Imperial Gazetteer for
NWFP (1905:172) concerning the neighboring NWFP district of Kohat, “… the
Awans and Hindus talk Hindki, a dialect of Panjabi, among themselves …”