Panjabi
Panjabi (or Punjabi) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in a contiguous region in northwestern India and northeastern Pakistan. In India, it is one of the recognized national languages and the official state language of Punjab. Approximately 2.79 percent of the population of India, estimated in March 2001 at over one billion, are Panjabi speakers, yielding approximately 28 million speakers. In Pakistan, 48 percent of the population (estimated at 142,392,000) speak Panjabi, giving around 72 million speakers. Panjabi speakers also live in North America, Europe, East Asia, and East Africa.
The main dialect clusters are those of eastern Punjab, the central dialect (Majhi), and western varieties in Pakistan that constitute a complex dialect continuum. Older literature refers to western varieties of Panjabi as Lahnda or Lahndi.
In India, Panjabi is written in the Gurmukhi script, traditionally attributed to Guru Angad (1504–1552 CE), but with earlier roots; in Pakistan it is written in the Urdu script. Important figures in Panjabi literature include Sheikh (Baba) Farid (1173–1265), the Sikh Gurus, and the Sufi poets Shah Husain (1538–1601) and Bulleh Shah (1680–1758). The folk romance (qissa) Hir-Ranjha of Waris Shah (1735–1790?) is the best known Panjabi work of the eighteenth century. Eminent contemporary literary figures in India are Mohan Singh 'Mahir' (1905–1978) and Amrita Pritam (b. 1917). In Pakistan, Shafqat Tanveer Mirza (b. 1932), and Nasreen Anjum Bhatti (b. 1948) are important.
Linguistic Summary
In the Panjabi consonant system, voiced-voiceless, aspirated-unaspirated, and dental-retroflex oppositions are phonological. In the vowel system, nasalization and three phonemic tones are distinctive.
Nouns distinguish number (singular and plural) and gender (masculine and feminine). Some nouns bear a characteristic mark of gender.
Basic verb forms are constructed on the stem, the imperfective participle, or the perfective participle. Panjabi is a split-ergative language, in which perfective tenses of transitive verbs agree with an unmarked direct object (not with the subject). The normal word order in a sentence is subject, object, verb.
Indo-Aryan Languages
Further Reading
Masica, Colin P. (1991) The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Sekhon, Sant Singh. (1993) A History of Panjabi Literature. 2 vols. Patiala, India: Publication Bureau, Punjabi University.
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