Punjabi (Eastern)

Where it’s spoken

Eastern Punjabi is the official language of Punjab in India, the working language of the Sikh religion, and a major heritage language for the Sikh and Punjabi Hindu diaspora in the UK (Birmingham, London), Canada (Vancouver, Toronto), the United States (especially California’s Central Valley), and Australia. About 33 million speak it as a first language in India alone.

What it sounds like

Punjabi is the only Indo-Aryan language with phonemic lexical tone — three tones (high, low, level) distinguish word meanings. The tones arose from the loss of voiced aspirated consonants. Like other Indo-Aryan languages, it has aspirated stops, dental/retroflex contrasts, and nasalized vowels.

How it’s written

Eastern Punjabi uses Gurmukhi (ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ, “from the mouth of the Guru”), a Brahmic script developed by the second Sikh Guru, Angad, in the 16th century. It has 35 base consonants and additional dotted letters for Persian-origin sounds, and is the script of the Guru Granth Sahib.

History

Punjabi developed from medieval Indo-Aryan dialects of the Punjab region. The Sikh Gurus (15th–17th century) elevated Punjabi as a sacred language, composing the Guru Granth Sahib partly in it. The 1947 partition divided the Punjab and split Punjabi into the Gurmukhi (India) and Shahmukhi (Pakistan) literary traditions.