Punjabi language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
Punjabi
ਪੰਜਾਬੀ پنجابی Pañjābī
Spoken in: Pakistan, India, UK, USA, Canada, Burma, Dubai, Philippines and other countries with Punjabi migrants 
Region: Punjab
Total speakers: western Punjabi: 61-62 million native (est., 2000)
Siraiki: 13 million native (est., 2000)
eastern Panjabi: 27 million native (1991) 
Ranking: 10th place (by a liberal definition of Punjabi)
Counting eastern Punjabi as a separate language, ca. 15th place for western Punjabi and Siraiki combined, ca. 35th place for eastern Punjabi
Language family: Indo-European
 Indo-Iranian
  Indo-Aryan
   Punjabi 
Writing system: Shahmukhi, Gurmukhi 
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)
lah – Lahnda languages
Indic script
 This page contains Indic text. Without rendering support you may see irregular vowel positioning and a lack of conjuncts. More...

Punjabi (also Panjabi; 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 Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism. Under a very broad definition of which dialects constitute "Punjabi", the number of native speakers is estimated at 101-102 million, which would place it at around 11th place among the world's languages. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European language family. Unusually for an Indo-European language, Punjabi is tonal; the tones arose as a reinterpretation of different consonant series in terms of pitch. As for linguistic typology, the default word order is Subject Object Verb. The written standard for Punjabi is based on a dialect of eastern Punjabi, the Majhi[1] dialect, which is spoken in the Amritsar_District and the Gurdaspur_District of the Indian State of Punjab.

Contents

[edit] Dialects: linguistic classification

Punjab is a geographic region with a very long history, presently divided between Pakistan and India. However, the linguistic term "Punjabi" is quite problematic because of unresolved difficulties in the classification of dialects traditionally considered as belonging to Punjabi. Current specialists disagree as to the number of dialects and their genetic relationships.[2] Some sources[who?] do not even accept the notion that all the dialects traditionally assigned to "Punjabi" are closely related to one another, let alone constitute a single language. There is no question that "eastern Punjabi" and "western Punjabi" are distinct language varieties. The uncertainty involves the genetic relationship between them.

[edit] Hypothesis of Eastern Punjabi and Western Punjabi

In this view, the dialects that used to be considered a single language, "Punjabi" fall into two groups which do not even belong to the same major branch of the Indo-Aryan languages. "Eastern Punjabi" is classified (in this splitting view) in a "Central Zone" of the Indo-Aryan languages, together with Western Hindi (which includes the Khari Boli dialect, the written standard of Hindi), Gujarati, and others, while "Western Punjabi" is assigned to a "Northwestern Zone" which comprises three subgroups: the Dardic languages (whose most prominent member is Kashmiri, the Lahnda_languages (ਲਹਿੰਦੀ) (whose most prominent member is western Punjabi), and the Sindhi languages. According to this theory, western Punjabi is one language within the Lahnda languages.[3] The justification for this classification of eastern Punjabi and western Punjabi has been derived from Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India (1904-1928). The very notions of the "Lahnda" and "Dardic" language groupings are proposals on the part of Grierson.[citation needed] Grierson defined western Punjabi as that dialect of the traditional province of Punjab spoken west of a line running north-south from Sahiwal and Gujranwala districts (now part of Pakistani province of The Punjab). This refers to the era before the secession of Pakistan from India in 1948. Grierson's line now lies well within present day Pakistan. Masica remarks that "whatever validity Grierson's line may once have had has no doubt been disturbed by the great movements of population associated with partition".[4] Because of the mass population exchanges that occurred during the partition of India, the international border between Pakistan and India is now also the dialect (or language) border between western Punjabi and eastern Punjabi.[5]

[edit] Western Punjabi and Siraiki

The relation between western Punjabi and Siraiki (Seraiki) is the focus of another classification debate. To be precise, western Punjabi and Siraiki are not single dialects, but rather groups of dialects. It is widely accepted that they are mutually intelligible, hence, from the objective linguistic perspective, that they belong to the same language (along with perhaps yet other dialect groups within "Northwestern Indo-Aryan". The controversy about their genetic relationship is whether they are distinct dialect groups or instead a single one. Ethnologue reports yet another analysis: "Until recently Siraiki was considered to be a dialect of Panjabi"[6], which indicates they do not share that view. From the legal perspective -- in contrast to the linguistic perspective -- Pakistan classifies Siraiki and western Punjabi as different "languages".[7]

[edit] Number of speakers

According to the 1991 Indian census there were 27 million speakers of eastern Punjabi in India, mostly in the State of Punjab (northwest of New Delhi and south of Jammu and Kashmir). According to Ethnologue, there are about 900,000 more outside of India. There were estimated to be over 60 million speakers of Western Punjabi in Pakistan in 2000, nearly all in the province of Punjab. As of 2000, there were estimated to be over 13 million speakers of Siraiki dialects in Pakistan, in southern Punjab and northern Sindh. In the broadest definition of "Punjabi", these numbers would be added together to yield 100 million speakers. These figures will be significantly greater in 2008 due to population trends in the two countries.

[edit] Some classification lists

There are many dialects of Punjabi and they all form part of a dialect continuum, merging with Sindhi and related languages in Pakistan, and Hindustani in India. The main dialects of Punjabi are Majhi, Doabi, Malwai and Powadhi in India and the east of Pakistani Punjab, and Pothohari, Lahndi and Multani in the west of Pakistani Punjab.

Punjabi University, Patiala, State of Punjab, India, taking a very broad definition, lists the following as dialects of Punjabi:[8]

Some of these dialects, such as Dogri, Siraiki and Hindko are sometimes considered separate languages, and are classified in different zones or divisions of Indo-Aryan:

SIL Ethnologue takes the narrow classification view:

└Indo-Aryan
 └Northern zone
  └Western Pahari
   └Dogri [dgo]
 └Central zone
  └Eastern Punjabi [pan]
 └Northwestern zone
   └Lahnda [lah]
    ├Jakati [jat]
    ├Mirpur Punjabi [pmu]
    ├Northern Hindko [hno]
    ├Pahari-Potwari [phr]
    ├Siraiki [skr]
    ├Southern Hindko [hnd]
    └Western Punjabi [pnb]


[edit] Geographic distribution

Punjabi is the official language of the Indian state of Punjab and the shared state capital Chandigarh[9]. It is one of the official second languages of the states of Delhi and Haryana.[10] Punjabi is the predominant language in the Punjab province of Pakistan (and the most widely spoken language in all Pakistan according to the CIA factbook[11]), although it has no official status at the national level in Pakistan, where in any case the preferred languages of the elite are Urdu and English.[citation needed]

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[12]) and Canada (where it is the fifth most commonly used language[13]). In recent times Punjabi has grown fast and has now become the fourth most spoken language in Canada.[14]

Punjabi is the preferred language of most Sikhs (most of their religious literature being written in it) and Punjabi Hindus. It is the usual language of Bhangra music, which has recently gained wide popularity both in South Asia and abroad.

[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

Panjabi has a three-way tone contrast that developed from the lost murmured series of consonants. These are phonetically rising or rising-falling contours which cover one or two syllables, but can be distinguished phonemically as high, mid, and low.

An initial historically murmured consonant became tenuis and left a low tone on the following couple syllables: ghoṛā [kòːɽɑ̀ː] "horse". A stem-final murmured consonant became voiced and left a high tone on the preceding couple syllables: 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 following couple syllables: maghāṇā [məɡɑ̀ːɳɑ̀ː] "to be lit". Other syllables and words have mid tone.[15]

[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 to name many other places and dialects in north India; these have nothing to do with the Majhi dialect of Punjabi
  2. ^ Masica 1991
  3. ^ Ethnologue, Indo-Aryan languages page
  4. ^ Masica, Colin P (1991). The Indo-Aryan Languages8989uuijhygt. Cambridge University Press, pp.18-20. ISBN 0-521-29944-6. 
  5. ^ Ethnologue, India and Pakistan pages
  6. ^ Ethnologue, Pakistan page
  7. ^ "Siraiki and Punjabi are mutually intelligible but the census has classified them as different languages since the 1970s"; Rahman 2006.
  8. ^ Advanced Centre for Technical Development of Punjabi Language, Literature and Culture
  9. ^ The city of Chandigarh is the capital of two Indian states, Punjab and Haryana
  10. ^ The Times of India - "Punjabi, Urdu made official languages in Delhi" 25 June 2003
  11. ^ CIA World Factbook, Pakistan- People
  12. ^ "Punjabi Community". The United Kingdom Parliament.
  13. ^ Canadian Census Data (2001)
  14. ^ Punjabi is 4th most spoken language in Canada-Indians Abroad-The Times of India
  15. ^ Harjeet Singh Gill, "The Gurmukhi Script", p. 397. In Daniels and Bright, The World's Writing Systems. 1996.

[edit] References


[edit] External links

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


v • d • e
 (Official) Languages of the Republic of India
Federal-level Official languages
State-level official languages

Assamese · Bengali · Bodo · Dogri · Garo · Gujarati · Standard Hindi · Kannada · Kashmiri · Khasi · Kokborok · Konkani · Maithili · Malayalam · Meitei · Marathi · Mizo · Nepali · Oriya · Punjabi · Sanskrit  · Santali · Sindhi · Tamil · Telugu · Urdu
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punjabi_language"
Personal tools