Punjabi dialects and languages explained

Punjabi languages
Ethnicity:Punjabis
Region:Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh
Familycolor:Indo-European
Fam2:Indo-Iranian
Fam3:Indo-Aryan
Fam4:Northwestern
Glotto:lahn1241
Ancestor:Old Punjabi[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The Punjabi dialects and languages or Greater Punjabi are a series of dialects and languages spoken around the Punjab region of Pakistan and India with varying degrees of official recognition.[7] They have sometimes been referred to as the Greater Punjabi macrolanguage.[8] Punjabi may also be considered as a pluricentric language with more than one standard variety.[9]

Punjabi is a language spoken primarily in the Punjab region, which is divided between India and Pakistan. It is also spoken by Punjabi diaspora communities around the world. Punjabi itself has several dialects that can vary based on geographical, cultural, and historical factors.

The varieties of "Greater Punjabi" have a number of characteristics in common, for example the preservation of the Prakrit double consonants in stressed syllables. Nevertheless, there is disagreement on whether they form part of a single language group, with some proposed classifications placing them all within the Northwestern zone of Indo-Aryan, while others reserving this only for the western varieties, and assigning the eastern ones to the Central zone alongside Hindi.

Geographic distribution

The literary languages that have developed on the basis of dialects of this area are Standard Punjabi in eastern and central Punjab, Saraiki in the southwest, and Pahari-Pothwari in the northwest. A distinction is usually made between Punjabi in the east and the diverse group of "Lahnda" in the west. "Lahnda" typically subsumes the Saraiki and Hindko varieties, with Jhangvi and Shahpuri intermediate between the two groups. Pothwari shares features with both Lahnda and Punjabi.[10]

Pakistan

Punjabi, Hindko and Saraiki are listed separately in the census enumerations of Pakistan.[11] According to the 2017 Census of Pakistan, there are 80,536,390 Punjabi speakers; 25,324,637 Saraiki speakers and 5,065,879 Hindko speakers.[12] Saraiki was added to the census in 1981, and Hindko was added in 2017, prior to which both were represented by Lahnda language. In areas such as Gujar Khan and Rawalpindi where Pothwari is a spoken language,[13] speakers significantly selected 'Punjabi" instead of "Other" in all previous census enumeration.[14]

Azad Kashmir

In a statistical survey carried about by a proxy of the Government of Azad Kashmir, most speakers of Azad Kashmir spoke a variety of Pahari-Pothwari, while Punjabi attained a plurality in the Bhimber district.[15] Some Pothwari speakers in Azad Kashmir and the Pothohar refer to their mother tongue as Punjabi, hence those choosing 'Punjabi' may be referring to 'Pothwari/Pahari'.[16]

India

In India, Punjabi is listed as a constitutional language and is counted in the census returns. According to the 2011 Census of India, there are 33,124,726 Punjabi speakers which includes the varieties of Bagri (1,656,588 speakers) Bilaspuri (295,805 speakers) and Bhateali (23,970 speakers).[17] Bagri is spoken in parts of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. Bilaspuri and Bhateali are spoken in Himachal Pradesh. The status of Bagri is split between Punjabi and Rajasthani in the census returns with options available under Punjabi and Rajasthani.[18] Gusain (1991) places Bagri as a Rajasthani dialect.[19] Similarly, the identities of Bilaspuri and Bhateali are also split, in their case, between Punjabi and Dogri.[20] [21]

Lahnda languages are only enumerated in the census returns in India with 108,791 speakers listed in the 2011 census. The varieties listed under Lahnda are Bahawalpuri (29,253 speakers); Multani which is described as Hindi Multani (61,722 speakers) and unclassified (17,816 speakers).[22] Punchi is spoken in Jammu. The language variety is listed under Lahnda as it, together with Bahwalpuri and Multani satisfies the "criterion of 10,000 or more speakers at the all India level".[23]

Historically, Dogri was considered to be a dialect of Punjabi spoken primarily in Jammu.[24] In the 1941 Census, Dogri was listed under Punjabi.[25] Since 2003, Dogri is listed as an independent language in the constitution of India.[26] According to the 2011 Census - India, there are 2,596,767 Dogri speakers. Similar to Dogri, the Kangri language spoken in Himachal Pradesh was regarded as a Punjabi dialect but since 1971, it has been reclassified under Hindi.[27] There were 1,117,342 Kangri speakers listed in the 2011 Census- India. Despite the independent status of Dogri and reclassification of Kangri, both languages are claimed to fall within Punjabi by some writers.[28] [29] Others place Dogri and Kangri within the Western Pahari group.[30] Eberle et al. (2020) believe Dogri and Kangri are related to Eastern Punjabi and place these languages in a group of related languages descended from an intermediate division of Indo-Aryan languages.[31]

See also

Sources

External links

Notes and References

  1. Book: Haldar . Gopal . Languages of India . 2000 . National Book Trust, India . New Delhi . 9788123729367 . 149 . The age of Old Punjabi: up to 1600 A.D. […] It is said that evidence of Old Punjabi can be found in the Granth Sahib..
  2. Book: Bhatia . Tej K. . Punjabi: A Cognitive-Descriptive Grammar . 2013 . Routledge . London . 9781136894602 . XXV . Reprint . As an independent language Punjabi has gone through the following three stages of development: Old Punjabi (10th to 16th century). Medieval Punjabi (16th to 19th century), and Modern Punjabi (19th century to Present)..
  3. Book: Christopher Shackle . Arvind Mandair . Teachings of the Sikh Gurus : selections from the Scriptures . 2013 . Routledge . Abingdon, Oxon . 9781136451089 . First . 0.2.1 – Form . Surpassing them all in the frequent subtlety of his linguistic choices, including the use of dialect forms as well as of frequent loanwords from Sanskrit and Persian, Guru Nanak combined this poetic language of the Sants with his native Old Punjabi. It is this mixture of Old Punjabi and old Hindi which constitutes the core idiom of all the earlier Gurus..
  4. Book: Frawley . William . International encyclopedia of linguistics . 2003 . Oxford University Press . Oxford . 9780195139778 . 423 . 2nd.
  5. Book: Austin . Peter . One thousand languages : living, endangered, and lost . 2008 . University of California Press . Berkeley . 9780520255609 . 115.
  6. Book: Braj B. Kachru . Yamuna Kachru . S. N. Sridhar . Language in South Asia . 2008 . Cambridge University Press . 9781139465502 . 411.
  7. Web site: Glottolog 4.8 - Greater Panjabic . 2023-07-13 . glottolog.org.
  8. For the use of the term "Greater Panjabi", see and .
  9. https://www.peterlang.com/document/1050736
  10. Pothwari has previously been regarded as part of "Lahnda", but argues that it shares features with both groups. Jhangvi and Shahpuri are transitional between Saraiki and Punjabi.
  11. Web site: Pakistan Demographic Survey 2020. pbs.gov.pk. 20 March 2023.
  12. Web site: Table 11. Population by mother tongue, sex and rural/urban. pbs.gov.pk. 20 March 2023.
  13. Book: Singh, Dr Gurmeet . Information Seeking Behaviour of Users in Punjabi Literature . 2021-09-11 . K.K. Publications . 98 . en.
  14. Web site: Table 11. Population of Rawalpindi District by mother tongue. . pbs.gov.pk..
  15. Book: Statistical Year Book 2020 . AJ&K Bureau Of Statistics . Muzaffarabad . 131, 140 . 3 March 2022 . https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/https://www.pndajk.gov.pk/uploadfiles/downloads/Statistical%20Year%20Book%202020.pdf . 2022-10-09 . live.
  16. Web site: Pahari and Pothwari: a sociolinguistic survey . 2023-06-17 . SIL International . 44 . en.
  17. https://censusindia.gov.in/nada/index.php/catalog/42458/download/46089/C-16_25062018.pdf Census catalog
  18. https://censusindia.gov.in/nada/index.php/catalog/42458 Language (Paper 1 OF 2018)- Census of India2011
    • Gusain. Lakhan. 1999. A Descriptive Grammar of Bagri. 10603/16847. Jawaharlal Nehru University. PhD.
  20. Book: Tiwari, Dr Siyaram. Bhartiya Bhashaon Ki Pahchan. Vani Prakashan. 978-93-5229-677-4. hi.
  21. https://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/soas/frontmatter/abbreviations.html. xii.
  22. https://censusindia.gov.in/nada/index.php/catalog/10219 Census Index
  23. https://censusindia.gov.in/census.website/data/census-tables Census Tables
  24. Kli︠u︡ev, B. I. (1981). India, National and Language Problem. India: Sterling.https://books.google.com/books?id=s96JAAAAMAAJ&q=dogri+
  25. https://books.google.com/books?id=wgjSt2mmG58C&q=dogri+census+panjabi+dialect Census of India, 1941.  (1943). India: Manager of publications
  26. Coalition Politics and Hindu Nationalism. (2007). (n.p.): Taylor & Francis https://books.google.com/books?id=Rv6Kge4ql2AC&dq=dogri+census+2003&pg=PA103
  27. Language Sciences.  (1991). Japan: International Christian University Language Sciences Summer Institute.https://books.google.com/books?id=eQZPAQAAIAAJ&q=languages+sciences+1991+kangri
  28. Grewal, J.S. and Banga, Indu (1998) Punjab in prosperity and violence: administration, politics, and social change, 1947-1997. K.K. Publishers for Institute of Punjab Studies, Chandigarh https://books.google.com/books?id=oS9uAAAAMAAJ&q=Government+awarded+the+status+of+language,+was+actually+a+spoken+form+of+Punjabi.
  29. Web site: Pushp & Warikoo: Jammu, Kashmir & Ladakh - Linguistic Predicament. 2023-02-11. koshur.org.
  30. Jared Klein, Brian Joseph, Matthias Fritz (2017) Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics https://books.google.com/books?id=cQA2DwAAQBAJ&dq=dogri+and+kangri+western+pahari&pg=PA437
  31. Eberle, Ulrich J., et al. “Ethnolinguistic Diversity and Urban Agglomeration.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 117, no. 28, 2020, pp. 16250–57. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26935214. Accessed 12 Feb. 2023.

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