Talk:اچھنا

Pahari-Pothwari Verbs
What the infinitive ending for Pahari-Pothwari verbs? -نا, -ݨا or -ناں? There is a Shahmukhi dictionary that appears use -ناں and a Gurmukhi dictionary that appears to use the standard convention of -ਣਾ except after ਰ, ੜ, ੜ੍ਹ, ਨ, ਲ. Kutchkutch (talk) 02:50, 19 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Good question. Could you also list those dictionaries please?
 * From my experience Pothwari speakers have always pronounced it as . I'm not sure whether there is nasal vowel at the end or not. I've been meaning to add Pothwari lemmas, but I've so far refrained from doing so since I'm not even sure if there is a standard to follow. I've seen some GOV UK Pothwari leaflets such as the COVID-19 public info leaflet, which renders the retroflex n as an allophone of ن (but no nasal vowel in the end). Other times, I've seen it as نڑ.
 * I did also come across a book supposed written in Punjabi, but from what I could tell it was written in the Pothwari dialect (see quotation at ) which interestingly did make use of a separate letter for the Retroflex n. Also pinging to add any comments. نعم البدل (talk) 05:37, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Kutchkutch @نعم البدل The verbal noun in Pothohari ends in -ṇā ; nasalizing the final vowel or realization as نڑ are allophones. (The same as eastern Punjabi dialects.) The -dā ending in other dialects can be -nā̃ where the "nd" gets assimilated differently so that can be what you're seeing with ناں as the suffix.
 * It is common in dictionaries published in Pakistan to use forms ending in ن / ݨ instead of نا / ݨا which in Pothohari would be the oblique form as in اچھݨ والا while in some dialects like Dhanni and Shahpuri would be both the direct and oblique forms. In Bhai Maya Singh's dictionary, you will notice that verbs used primarily in the latter of these dialects end in ਣ because there is no form ending in ā. So the forms ending in n / ṇ are ones which exist in all dialects a verb is used in, and coincidentally matches the -an infinitive ending of Persian hence some dictionaries like Waddi Punjabi Lughat using this form for all verbs.
 * On Wikidata, I have chosen to use the -n / -ṇ termination instead of the forms with ā for the same reason; that way the lemma represents a form which exists in all the dialects the same verb stem is used in.
 * It is ultimately an arbitrary call to make as there are multiple forms we can call an “infinitive” for any given verb. I think the main reason many dictionaries use the ending with the final vowel is simply because it is closest to the one used in Hindi/Urdu dictionaries. عُثمان (talk) 06:26, 19 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the responses, and nice to meet you User:عُثمان. The Shahmukhi dictionary that I was referring to earlier is شیراز اُللغات by شیراز طاہر.
 * https://hindkobooks.com/home/175-shiraz-ul-lughat.html
 * https://archive.org/details/shiraz-ul-lughaat
 * The entries for verbs are not lemmatised. The entry could either be the imperative ending in -و, the oblique infinitive ending in نڑ, or the habitual participle ending in -ناں.
 * A Shahmukhi dictionary that is much shorter is پوٹھوہاری لغت
 * https://archive.org/details/shad-pothohari-lughat/
 * This dictionary also does not lemmatise verbs and uses ݨ instead of نڑ for entries in the infinitive oblique.
 * Page 117 of the PhD thesis Light Verb Constructions in Pothwari says that the infinitive ending is /na/ instead of Punjabi /Na/
 * https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/light-verb-constructions-in-potwari
 * The Gurmukhi Pothwari dictionary is ਪੋਠੋਹਾਰੀ ਕੋਸ਼.
 * Given this situation, perhaps the treatment of Shahmukhi Pothwari should be similar to Shahmukhi Punjabi with the page title using ن and the headword using ݨ as needed, especially when the verb stem does not end in ر, ڑ, ڑھ, ن, ل. Kutchkutch (talk) 22:35, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Kutchkutch That page in the light verb thesis is worded confusingly; the example it gives is پڑھنا which follows the ordinary rule of alveolar ن being used after a retroflex consonant. The retroflex nasal is as prominent in Pothohari as any other Punjabi dialect otherwise.
 * Note that purportedly, according to Hardev Bahri, the retroflex form of ل is not typically expressed in Pothohari.
 * And yes, I have seen those three dictionaries (I uploaded them). You should be able to cross reference nearly every verb which appears in them to Salahuddin's dictionary Waddi Punjabi Lughat which is lemmatized consistently (and I would recommend doing so as the definitions in that dictionary are excellent). عُثمان (talk) 22:53, 19 May 2023 (UTC)