Dialects of the Punjab

The Punjabi dialects and languages or Punjabic are a series of dialects and languages spoken in the Punjab region of Pakistan and India with varying degrees of official recognition. They have sometimes been referred to as ''Greater Punjabi''.

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 Hindko and Pahari-Pothwari in the north and north-west.

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. Commonly recognised Eastern Punjabi dialects include Majhi (the standard), Doabi, Malwai, and Puadhi. The "Lahnda" variety of Khetrani in the far west may be intermediate between Saraiki and Sindhi.

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.

Standard Punjabi

''Standard Punjabi,'' sometimes referred to as Majhi in India or simply as “Punjabi”, is the most widespread and largest dialect of Punjabi. It first developed in the 12th century and gained prominence when Sufi poets such as Shah Hussain, Bulleh Shah among others began to use the Lahore/Amritsar spoken dialect with infused Persian vocabulary in their works in the Shahmukhi script. Later the Gurmukhi script was standardized based on Majhi using pre-existing Laṇḍā scripts by the Sikh Gurus.

Standard Punjabi is spoken by the majority of the people in Faisalabad, Lahore, Gujranwala, Sheikhupura, Kasur, Sialkot, Narowal, Gujrat, Okara, Pakpattan, Sahiwal, Hafizabad, Nankana Sahib and Mandi Bahauddin districts of Pakistan's Punjab Province. It also has a large presence in every district in the rest of Pakistani Punjab, and in all large cities in Pakistan's other provinces.

In India it is spoken in Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Pathankot, and the Gurdaspur districts of the State of Punjab.

In Pakistan, the Standard Punjabi dialect is not referred to as the 'Majhi dialect', which may be considered as 'Indian terminology', rather simply as 'Standard Punjabi'. This dialect is widely used in the TV and entertainment industry, which is mainly produced in Lahore.

Eastern Punjabi

Eastern Punjab, known as ''Chardha or Chardhi'', is home to a variety of Punjabic vernaculars and lects. The main ones are listed below.

Malwai

Spoken in the Malwa region of Punjab.

Doabi

Spoken in the Bist Doaba region of Punjab and lowland Himachal Pradesh.

Powadhi

Spoken in the Powadh region of Punjab and Haryana.

Bagri

Spoken in the Bagar tract region of southwestern Punjab (India), northern Rajasthan, and neighbouring areas of Punjab (Pakistan). This is a transitional dialect between the Rajasthani-languages further south, Haryanvi to the east, and Punjabic proper to the north.

Western Punjabi

Western Punjabi, also known as ''Lahnda'', has a great deal of diverse and divergent Punjabic vernaculars and dialects. Many scholars claim they may constitute a separate genetic grouping from Punjabi proper, but this has yet to be established and its validity has been questioned by some but all have been given separate Language status in the 2023 Census of Pakistan. The three include Hindko, Pahari-Pothwari and Saraiki.

References

Sources

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*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

Online database
*
*
*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.
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* (requires registration)

External links

Map of Punjabi dialects
from Grierson's early 20th-century Linguistic Survey of India

{{Language varieties

Languages of Punjab, Pakistan
Languages of India
Punjabi language