Punjabi language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Punjabi ਪੰਜਾਬੀ پنجابی Pañjābī |
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| Spoken in: | India, Pakistan, UK, Saudi Arabia, UAE, USA, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Africa, Suriname, Guyana | |||
| Region: | Punjab | |||
| Total speakers: | Punjabi: 120 million native speakers. | |||
| Ranking: | 9 -11 in a near tie with German and French | |||
| Language family: | Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Punjabi |
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| Writing system: | Shahmukhi, Gurmukhi, and Devanagari | |||
| Official status | ||||
| Official language in: |  Punjab, Delhi, Chandigarh Punjab, |
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| 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) |
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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 Sikhism, Islam and Hinduism. It has over 120 million native speakers, which makes it approximately the 10th most widely spoken language in the world. [1]</ref>[1][2] The written standard for Punjabi for at least 1000 years has been based on the Majhi dialect, the dialect of the historical region of Majha,[3] which spans the Lahore, Sheikhupura, Kasur, Gujranwala, Sialkot, and Narowal Districts of the Pakistani Province of Punjab and Amritsar District and Gurdaspur District of the Indian State of Punjab.[4]
[edit] Geographic distribution
[edit] Punjabis in Pakistan
Punjabi is the most commonly spoken language of Pakistan. A little more than 60% of Pakistanis are Punjabis and speak Punjabi. Punjabi is the official language of Punjab province of Pakistan.
The Punjabis found in Pakistan are composed of various social groups (caste) and economic groups. Muslim Rajputs, Jat, Gujjars, Gakhars, Khatri or Punjabi Shaikhs, Kambohs, Awans, and Arains, comprise the main tribes in the north, while Gilanis, Gardezis, Syeds and Quraishis are found in the south. There are Pashtun tribes like the Niazis and the lodhis, which are very much integrated into Punjabi village life, especially the members of the Niazi tribe, who see themselves as Punjabis first. People in major urban areas have diverse origins, with many post-Islamic settlers tracing their origin to Afghanistan, Persia, Arabia, Kashmir and Central Asia.[5]
[edit] Punjabis in India
Punjabi is spoken as a native 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 languages of the state of Delhi and the second language of Haryana.
The Punjabis found in India are composed of various ethnic groups, tribal groups, social groups (caste) and economic groups. Some major sub-groups of Punjabis in India include (alphabetical order): Jats, Rajputs, Ahirs, Arora, Bania, Bhatia, Brahmin, Gujjar, Kalals/Ahluwalias, Kambojs, Khatris, Labanas, Saini, Sood and Tarkhan. Most of these groups can be further sub-divided into clans and family groups.
Most of East Punjab's Muslims (in today's states of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi and Chandigarh) left for West Punjab in 1947. However, a small community still exists today, mainly in Malerkotla, the only Muslim princely state among the seven that formed the erstwhile Patiala and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU). The other six (mostly Sikh) states were: Patiala, Nabha, Jind, Faridkot, Kapurthala and Kalsia.
[edit] The Punjabi Diaspora
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[6]) and Canada, where in recent times Punjabi has grown fast and has now become the fourth most spoken language.[7]
Ten most Punjabi speaking countries.
Pakistan: 800,00,000 THE Most commonly spoken language.
India: 300,00,000 9th most commonly spoken language.
United kingdom: 16,00,000 2nd most common language.
Canada: 800,000 4th most common spoken language.
United Arab Emerates: 720,000.
United States: 700,000.
Saudi Arabia: 640,000.
Hongkong: 270,000.
Australia: 180,000.
france: 140,000.
[edit] History
Punjabi is a descendant of Sauraseni, which was the chief language of medieval northern India[8][9][10]
Punjabi emerged as an independent language in the 11th century from the Sauraseni Apabhramsa.[11] However, the literary tradition in Punjabi started with Fariduddin Ganjshakar (Baba Farid), many ancient Sufi mystics and later Guru Nanak Dev ji, the first Guru of the Sikhism.
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.
[edit] Association with the Sikhs
Guru Arjan Dev, 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 and Persian words.[12] 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.
[edit] Modern Punjabi
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.[13] The Hindu and Muslim Punjabis began to assert that their mother tongue were Hindi and Urdu respectively. After the independence of Pakistan and subsequent 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 Kumar Batalvi, Surjit Patar and Amrita Pritam (winner of Jnanpith Award).
[edit] Bhangra
Bhangra is a form of music and dance that originated in the Punjab region. Bhangra began as a folk dance conducted by farmers to celebrate the coming of Spring, a time known as Vaisakhi. Today, bhangra survives in different forms and styles all over the globe – including pop music, film soundtracks, and even collegiate competitions.
Traditional Bhangra is a fusion of music, singing and the beat of the dhol drum, a single-stringed instrument called the iktar (ektara), the tumbi and the chimta. The accompanying songs are small couplets written in the Punjabi language called bolis. They relate to current issues faced by the singers and (dil the gal) what they truly want to say. In Punjabi folk music, the dhol's smaller cousin, the dholki, was nearly always used to provide the main beat. Nowadays the dhol is used more frequently, with and without the dholki. Additional percussion, including tabla, is less frequently used in bhangra as a solo instrument but is sometimes used to accompany the dhol and dholki. The dholki drum patterns in Bhangra music bear an intimate similarity to the rhythms in Reggae music. This rhythm serves as a common thread which allows for easy commingling between Bhangra and Reggae as demonstrated by such artists as the UK's Apache Indian.
[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".[14][15] 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, the Saraiki language movemement agitated for recognition of their own language as being unique and distinct from the majority language of Panjabi in the Pakistani province of Panjab. Uniquely located along four of Pakistan's province in the centre of Pakistan, Seraiki vocabularly has several indigenous words unique to it as well as vocabulary from adjacent regions of Pakistan. For a long time considered a sub-dialect of the predominant Panjabi language of the province and conversely as a sub-dialect of Sindhi in the province of Sindh, Seraiki speakers began to assert their distinctive identity, culture, history and cited numerous examples including having a written standard, and the census of Pakistan has classified them as different languages since the 1970s in recognition of this.[16] Saraiki had an estimated 13 million speakers as of 2000. Saraiki and Punjabi are conspicuously different from one another in sounds and grammar.[citation needed]
[edit] List of Punjabi dialects
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:[17]
[edit] Examples Of Punjabi Dialect
[edit] The "Lahnda" constructThe name "Punjab" means "5 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. The bulk of the Panjab, 3.5 rivers are located in Pakistan. 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 Abraham 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.[4] 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 and within the boundary of Pakistan.[18] In the aftermath of the independence of Pakistan and subsequent 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] Most Panjabi's in Pakistan including Muslim migrants from east panjab now speak the Lahnda dialect. [edit] Classification by EthnologueBecause 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]
[edit] Phonology
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[edit] Writing systemThere 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 Persio-Arabic and is essentially same as Urdu script. 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[edit] Dictionaries
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
[edit] Further reading
[edit] External links Punjabi language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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