Punjabi language

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Punjabi
ਪੰਜਾਬੀ پنجابی Pañjābī
Spoken in: Pakistan, India, UK, USA, Canada, Australia, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong 
Region: Punjab
Total speakers: Punjabi: 90 million native speakers as of 1998. 
Ranking: 9-11 in a near tie with German and French
Language family: Indo-European
 Indo-Iranian
  Indo-Aryan
   Punjabi 
Writing system: Shahmukhi, Gurmukhi, and Devanagari 
Official status
Official language in: Flag of Pakistan Punjab, Flag of India Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Chandigarh
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: pa
ISO 639-2: pan
ISO 639-3: variously:
pan – Punjabi (Eastern)
pnb – Punjabi (Western)
pmu – Punjabi (Mirpuri)
Indic script
 This page contains Indic text. Without rendering support you may see irregular vowel positioning and a lack of conjuncts. More...

Punjabi (ਪੰਜਾਬੀ in Gurmukhi script, پنجابی in Shahmukhi script, Pañjābī in transliteration) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region (now split between India and Pakistan) and their diasporas. Speakers include adherents of the religions of Islam, Sikhism, and Hinduism. It has over 90 million native speakers according to the Pakistan census of 1998 and the India census of 2001, which makes it approximately the 11th most widely spoken language in the world. Unusually for an Indo-European language, Punjabi is tonal; the tones arose as a result of the loss of the voiced aspirate consonant series found in most Indo-Aryan languages. The written standard for Punjabi for at least 300 years has been based on the Majhi dialect, the dialect of the historical region of Majha,[1] which spans the Lahore, Sheikhupura, Kasur, Gujranwala, and Sialkot Districts of the Pakistani Province of Punjab and Amritsar District and Gurdaspur District of the Indian State of Punjab.[2]

Contents

[edit] Geographic distribution

Punjabi is the most common language of Pakistan. Punjabi is spoken as first language by 45% of Pakistanis.[3] About 70% of Pakistanis know how to speak Punjabi. Punjabi is the Provincial language of the Pakistani Province of Punjab.

Punjabi is spoken as first language by 3% of Indians, esp. the followers of Sikhism. Punjabi is the official language of the Indian state of Punjab and the shared state capital Chandigarh. It is one of the official second languages of the states of Delhi and Haryana.

Punjabi is also spoken as a minority language in several other countries where Punjabis have emigrated in large numbers, such as the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom (where it is the second most commonly used language[4]) and Canada, where in recent times Punjabi has grown fast and has now become the fourth most spoken language.[5] Punjabi is the preferred language of most Sikhs (most of their religious literature being written in it) and Punjabi Hindu and Punjabi Muslims living in Pakistan. It is the usual language of Bhangra music, which has recently gained wide popularity in other parts of South Asia and abroad.

[edit] History

Punjabi is a descendant of Sauraseni, which was the chief language of medieval northern India[6][7][8]

Punjabi emerged as an independent language in the 11th century from the Sauraseni Apabhramsa.[9] However, the literary tradition in Punjabi started with Baba Farid who is considered to be one of the earliest scholars in the Punjabi language and his literature greatly influenced Guru Nanak the founder of the Sikh religion.

Guru Arjan Dev ji, the fifth Sikh Guru, compiled Sri Guru Granth Sahib. A substantial portion of the Guru Granth Sahib is written in Punjabi, although it is interspersed with Hindi languages (such as Brajbhasha and Khariboli), and also contains Sanskrit, Persian and Marathi words.[10] Guru Gobind Singh ji also composed Chandi di Var in Punjabi, although most of his works are composed in other languages like Braj bhasha and Persian.

Between 1600 and 1850, Sikh, Hindu and Muslim Sufi writers composed many works in Punjabi. The most famous Punjabi Sufi poet was Baba Bulleh Shah, who wrote in the Kafi style. Waris Shah's rendition of the tragic love story of Heer Ranjha is among the most popular medieval Punjabi works. Other popular tragic love stories are Sohni Mahiwal, Mirza Sahiba and Sassi Punnun. Shah Mohammad's Jangnama is another fine piece of poetry that gives an eyewitness account of the First Anglo-Sikh War that took place after the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

The Punjabi identity was affected by the communal sentiments in the 20th century. Bhai Vir Singh, a major figure in the movement for the revival of Punjabi literary tradition, started insisting that the Punjabi language was the exclusive preserve of the Sikhs.[11] The Hindu and Muslim Punjabis began to assert that their mother tongue were Hindu and Urdu respectively. After Partition of India in 1947, Punjabi was sidelined by Urdu in the Pakistani Punjab. With the Partition, the Indian Punjab became Hindi-majority. The movement for a Punjabi Suba led to trifurcation of Indian Punjab into three states: Punjab (India), Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Punjabi was made the official language of Punjab and Delhi (NCR) and has flourished greatly.

The famous Indian Punjabi poets in modern times are Mohan Singh, Pritam Singh Safir, I C Nanda, Balwant Gargi, Shiv Batavi, Surjit Patar and Amrita Pritam (winner of Jnanpith Award).

[edit] Dialects: linguistic classification

In Indo-Aryan dialectology generally, the presence of transitional dialects creates problems in assigning some dialects to one or another "language".[12][13] However, over the last century there has usually been little disagreement when it comes to defining the core region of the Punjabi language. In modern India, the states are largely designed to encompass the territories of major languages with an established written standard. Thus Indian Punjab is the Punjabi language state (in fact, the neighboring state of Haryana, which was part of Punjab state in 1947, was split off from it because it is a Hindi speaking region). Some of its major urban centers are Ludhiana, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Jalandhar, and Patiala. In neighboring Pakistan, the Punjabi speaking territory spans the east-central districts of Punjab Province, where the largest Punjabi speaking city, Lahore, is located.

[edit] Saraiki

In the 1960s Saraiki was developed as a distinct language in the sense of having a written standard, and the census of Pakistan has classified them as different languages since the 1970s.[14] Saraiki had over 13 million speakers as of 2000. Saraiki and Punjabi are mutually intelligible, although Saraiki and Punjabi are conspicuously different from one another in sounds and grammar.

[edit] List of Punjabi dialects

There are many dialects of Punjabi and they all form part of a dialect continuum, merging to the southwest with with Saraiki, to the east and south with Hindi, and to the north with Dogri. The main subgroups of Punjabi are Majhi, Doabi, Malwai, and Powadhi in India and the east of Pakistani Punjab.

Punjabi University, Patiala, State of Punjab, India takes a very liberal definition of Punjabi in that it classifies Saraiki, Dogri, and Pothohari/Pothwari as Punjabi. Accordingly, the University has issued the following list of dialects of Punjabi:[15]

[edit] The "Lahnda" construct

The name "Punjab" means "five waters" in Persian (panj ab) and refers to five major eastern tributaries of the Indus River. The historical Punjab region, now divided between Pakistan and India, is defined physiographically by the Indus River and these five tributaries. One of the five, the Beas River, is a tributary of another, the Sutlej River, and lies entirely in present day India, well within the eastern half of historical Punjab.

The British linguist George Grierson came to the conclusion that a group of dialects known collectively as "western Punjabi" spoken north and west of the Punjab heartland, in the Indus valley itself and on the lower reaches of the other four tributaries (excluding the Beas River), in fact constituted a language distinct from Punjabi. He christened this group of dialects "Lahindā" in a volume of the Language Survey of India (LSI) published in 1919.[16] (The -ā ending has on its own given rise to a bit of terminological confusion because, since "Lahnda" is a noun, not an adjective, some linguists of India have preferred to use the adjective "Lahndi" for the sake of consistency with the way of naming the other Indo-Aryan dialects and languages.) He grouped as "southern Lahnda" the dialects that are now recognized as Saraiki. Grierson tentatively identified the boundary between Punjabi and "Lahnda" as a north-south line running from the Gujranwala District to the former Montgomery District (near the town on Sahiwal). This line lies well west of Lahore.[17]

Later dialectologists have criticized details of the Lahnda/Lahndi construct or even denied its validity entirely. For most workers in this field, however, the Lahnda controversy has had little relevance to classification of the dialects of the metropolis of Lahore and of other localities along the Pakistan-India border. In the aftermath of the Partition of 1947, some investigators supposed that the Punjabi speakers in new Pakistan might give up their native dialects and adopt one or another "Lahnda" dialect; but this did not occur.[18]

[edit] Classification by Ethnologue

Because of the stature of Ethnologue as a widely accepted authority on the identification and classification of dialects and languages, their divergent views of the geographical distribution and dialectal naming of the Punjabi language merit mention. They designate what tradition calls "Punjabi" as "eastern Panjabi" and they have implicitly adopted the belief (contradicted by other specialists[19]) that the language border between "western Panjabi" and "eastern Panjabi" has shifted since 1947 to coincide with the international border.[20]


See also: States of India by Punjabi speakers

[edit] Phonology

Vowels
Front Central Back
Close iː uː
Near-close ɪ ʊ
Close-mid eː ə oː
Open ɛː ɑː ɔː
Consonants
Bilabial Labio-
dental		 Dental/
Alveolar		 Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m n ɳ ɲ ŋ
Plosive and
Affricate		 voiceless p t̪ ʈ ʧ k
voiceless aspirated pʰ t̪ʰ ʈʰ ʧʰ kʰ
voiced b d̪ ɖ ʤ g
Fricative (f) s (z) (ʃ) ɦ
Flap ɾ ɽ
Approximant ʋ l ɭ j
Tone

Punjabi has three phonemically distinct tones that developed from the lost murmured (or "voiced aspirate") series of consonants. Phonetically the tones are rising or rising-falling contours and they can span over one syllable or two, but phonemically they can be distinguished as high, mid, and low.

A historical murmured consonant (voiced aspirate consonant) in word initial position became tenuis and left a low tone on the two syllables following it: ghoṛā [kòːɽɑ̀ː] "horse". A stem final murmured consonant became voiced and left a high tone on the two syllables preceding it: māgh [mɑ́ːɡ] "October". A stem medial murmured consonant which appeared after a short vowel and before a long vowel became voiced and left a low tone on the two syllables following it: maghāṇā [məɡɑ̀ːɳɑ̀ː] "to be lit". Other syllables and words have mid tone.[21]

[edit] Grammar

Main article: Punjabi grammar

[edit] Writing system

There are several different scripts used for writing the Punjabi language, depending on the region and the dialect spoken, as well as the religion of the speaker. In the Punjab province of Pakistan, the script used is Shahmukhi (from the mouth of the Kings), a modified version of Persian-Nasta'liq (Arabic) script. But for all practical purposes the script in implementation is identical to Urdu. In the Indian state of Punjab, Sikhs and others use the Gurmukhī (from the mouth of the Gurus) script. Hindus, and those living in neighbouring Indian states such as Haryana and Himachal Pradesh sometimes use the Devanāgarī script. Gurmukhī and Shahmukhi scripts are the most commonly used for writing Punjabi and are considered the official scripts of the language.

[edit] Role in Education

[edit] Notable authors

See List of Punjabi authors.

[edit] Dictionaries

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "Majhi" is a word used with reference to many other places and dialects in north India; these have nothing to do with the Majhi dialect of Punjabi
  2. ^ Shackle 1970:240
  3. ^ [1] CIA World Factbook
  4. ^ "Punjabi Community". The United Kingdom Parliament.
  5. ^ Punjabi is 4th most spoken language in Canada-Indians Abroad-The Times of India
  6. ^ India's culture through the ages by Mohan Lal Vidyarthi. Published by Tapeshwari Sahitya Mandir, 1952. Page 148: "From the apabhramsha of Sauraseni are derived Punjabi, Western Hindi, Rajasthani and Gujerati [sic]..."
  7. ^ National Communication and Language Policy in India By Baldev Raj Nayar. Published by F. A. Praeger, 1969. Page 35. "...Sauraseni Aprabhramsa from which have emerged the modern Western Hindi and Punjabi."
  8. ^ The Sauraseni Pr?krit Language. "This Middle Indic language originated in Mathura, and was the main language used in drama in Northern India in the medieval period. Two of its descendants are Hindi and Punjabi."
  9. ^ Language India. Volume 5 : 12 December 2005. Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
  10. ^ The Adi Granth: Or The Holy Scriptures Of The Sikhs by Ernest Trumpp. 2004. ISBN 8121502446.
  11. ^ Punjabis Without Punjabi By Ishtiaq Ahmed. The News, 5/24/2008.
  12. ^ Masica 1991:25
  13. ^ Burling 1970:chapter on India
  14. ^ Rahman 2006.
  15. ^ Advanced Centre for Technical Development of Punjabi Language, Literature and Culture
  16. ^ Shackle 1970:240
  17. ^ Masica 1991:20
  18. ^ Masica 1991:20
  19. ^ e.g., Shackle 1970:240, Panjabi University in India, see below
  20. ^ Ethnologue country pages for India and Pakistan; page for Indo-Aryan languages
  21. ^ Harjeet Singh Gill, "The Gurmukhi Script", p. 397. In Daniels and Bright, The World's Writing Systems. 1996.

[edit] References

  • Burling, Robbins. 1970. Man's many voices. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
  • Ethnologue. Indo-Aryan Classification of 219 languages that have been assigned to the Indo-Aryan grouping of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages.
  • Ethnologue. Languages of India
  • Ethnologue. Languages of Pakistan
  • Grierson, George A. 1904-1928. Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India. Calcutta.
  • Masica, Colin. 1991. The Indo-Aryan languages. Cambridge Univ. Press.
  • Rahman, Tariq. 2006. The role of English in Pakistan with special reference to tolerance and militancy. In Amy Tsui et al., Language, policy, culture and identity in Asian contexts. Routledge. 219-240.
  • Shackle, C. 1970. Punjabi in Lahore. Modern Asian Studies, 4(3):239-267. Available online at JSTOR.

[edit] Further reading

  • Bhatia, Tej. 1993. Punjabi : a cognitive-descriptive grammar. Routledge. Series: Descriptive grammars.
  • Gill H.S. [Harjit Singh] and Gleason, H.A. 1969. A reference grammar of Punjabi. Revised edition. Patiala, Punjab, India: Languages Deparmtent, Punjab University.
  • Shackle, C. 1972. Punjabi. London: English Universities Press.

[edit] External links

Wikipedia
Punjabi language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wikimedia Incubator
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