Punjabi language

Panjabi, also Punjabi or Punjabi (پنجابی / ਪੰਜਾਬੀ IAST panjābī [pʌnˈʤɑːbiː]) is a language spoken in Pakistan and India. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European subgroup of Indo-European languages.

Panjabi is spoken in the Punjab region, which is divided between Pakistan and India, and in the worldwide diaspora. There are at least 115 million native speakers of Panjabi worldwide. In Pakistan, according to pre-released 2017 census results, spoken as a mother tongue by nearly 81 million people. Panjabi is Pakistan's largest single language, accounting for 39 percent of the total population. In the most populous province of Punjab, Panjabi speakers constitute the majority of the population. In India, Panjabi has about 33 million native speakers, according to the 2011 census. Most Panjabi speakers live in the state of Punjab, where they constitute the majority of the population. Panjabi-speaking minorities also exist in Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi. Due to migration, there is a large Panjabi speaking diaspora in North America, Europe and the Gulf region. Larger numbers of Panjabi speakers live in Canada (430,000), the United Kingdom (270,000 in England and Wales alone), and the United States (250,000), among other places.

In Pakistan, despite its large number of speakers, Panjabi has no official status and is hardly used as a written language. Urdu serves as the official and educational language. In India, on the other hand, Panjabi is recognized as one of 22 constitutional languages and serves as an official language in the state of Punjab.

The demarcation of dialects and individual languages is not always clear in the case of Panjabi. For example, Lahnda or West Panjabi, a group of more than 20 dialects (including Shahpuri, Multani, Saraiki, Hindko, Pothohari), although a separate language from a linguistic point of view, is often considered a Panjabi dialect. Dogri, spoken in the Jammu area of the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, was also previously classified as a Panjabi dialect by the Indian government, but since 2003 it has been recognized as a separate language in the Indian constitution.

Panjabi literature dates back to the 12th and 13th centuries, but did not experience a revival until the 17th century, when Panjabi became the language of Sikhism.

A phonological feature of Panjabi is that it is a tonal language. The stressed syllable can be spoken in three meaning-differentiating tones - the steady normal tone, the falling-rising low tone, and the rising-falling high tone. Historically in speech, the tones go back to the influence of an aspirated consonant (still present in writing) or an h sound. Compare:

• ਕੋੜਾ kōṛā [koːɽa] (with normal tone) "whip".
• ਕੋਹੜਾ kōhṛā [kóːɽa] (with treble) "leper"
• ਘੋੜਾ ghōṛā [kòːɽa] (with low tone) "horse"

Panjabi is usually written in its own script, called Gurmukhi. To distinguish themselves from the Panjabi-speaking Sikhs, Hindu Panjabi speakers in India sometimes also use the Devanagari script. In Pakistan, Panjabi is written in the Nastaliq dialect of the Persian Arabic script, called Shahmukhi, although written use is rare there.