Punjabi is spoken in mainly three areas of the world; in East Punjab (India) where it is a state language, in West Punjab (Pakistan) where it is most widely spoken and in the diaspora, particularly Britain, North America, East Africa and Australasia. No exact figures are available on the number of Punjabi speakers, either as a first or second language, but if the three Punjabs and various dialects are taken into account an approximation of 100 million would not be too far from the truth.

One of the main problems with designating the exact number of Punjabi speakers is the presence of a large number of distinct dialects that are spoken across the large geographical area of East and West Punjab. There are some recognized dialects of Punjabi according to Language Department of Punjab:

    According to Linguistic Department of Punjabi University, Patiala there are following dialects of the Punjabi language.

            One of the more interesting facts about the Punjabi language is that where it is numerically the most widely spoken, in Pakistani Punjab, it is hardly written at all. Punjabi is most often written in East Punjab in the Gurmukhi script. It is also possible to write the language in the Persian script often referred to as Shahmukhi in this context.

Despite the modern day usage of Gurmukhi, the first Punjabi literature was written in Shahmukhi, and popular history associates this writing with Sheikh Farid and Goraknath. However, the literary period of the language begins with the sacred scriptures of the Sikhs, the Guru Granth Sahib, This collection of writings by the Sikh Gurus is probably the first manuscript of the Punjabi language. After the period of the Gurus, it was the Sufi poets who developed the Punjabi language. In fact it is the folk literature developed by the Sufis, and particularly the Quissa-Love ballad form-which has had a long and lasting impact on the development of Punjabi literature. The stories of Heer-Ranjha and Mirza-Sahiban are deeply embedded in the everyday life and culture of Punjab.

Gurmukhi

Punjabi is most commonly written in the Gurmukhi script which is the most complete and  accurate way to represent Punjabi sounds. Unlike Roman script, the Gurmukhi script follows a �one sound-one symbol� principle.

The Gurmukhi script has forty one letters including thirty eight consonants and three basic vowel sign bearers. There are ten clear  vowel signs and three auxiliary signs. The most striking characteristic of the Gurmukhi script, in comparison with Roman, is that, with the exception of five, all letters are joined by a line across the top. Like English and other European, Latin-based languages, it is written and read from left to right. However, there are neither capital letters in Gurmukhi nor articles such as �a� and �the�. Punjabi spellings are, for the most part, regular and relatively simple to learn, though you may come across variations in spellings of some words. However, as is the case in English, Punjabi spellings are not fully standardised. Equivalent sounds which have been given in romanised script are only approximate since the Gurmukhi script has many  sounds unfamiliar to the English speaker which often may not be exactly represented by the Roman alphabet.

Top

Essential Features of the Gurmukhi Script

South Asian languages are richly endowed with vowels and consonants. Sanskrit may have been one of the first languages to group the letters according to their sounds. At one time there were only thirty-five letters in the Gurmukhi script, but later, five more letters were added in order to accommodate other sounds correctly. This need arose because  many loan words are used in Punjabi. More recently, an extra character ( ) was introduced.

Top

Consonants with a dot

It is also important to note the distinction between plain consonants and those consonants which are marked by a dot, as shown below:                                               

s	sh	kh	kh	g	g	j	z	ph	f

These letters are named by adding the words pYrIN ibMdI paireen bindee to the name of the letter, so � is called sSsy pYrIN ibMdI  (sasse paireen bindee), which literally means sassa with a dot in its foot. Many Punjabi speakers do not make a distinction between K � g � and P � . There are two main reasons for this, first their pronunciation is quite similar and second, they are used to differentiate borrowed words from other languages, the knowledge of which is decreasing in East Punjab. You may come across written texts in which writers have not used the dot. In this study, however, we have maintained its use.

Some Punjabi words require consonants to be written in a conjunct form, which takes the shape of a subscript to the main letter. The second consonant is written under the first as a subscript. There are only three commonly used subjoined letters and to distinguish them from their normal forms the word pYrIN paireen, which means belonging to the foot, is attached under the letter.

There are ten vowel phonemes in Punjabi in contrast to the English twenty or so. Punjabi symbols are generally as they are written following the one sign- one sound rule. They are vowels making only one sound. However, there are two forms that vowels can take. The independent vowel form which does not require a consonant and the dependent form which is attached to a consonant. All consonants use the dependent form of the vowel. Tables show the dependent vowels on their own combined with the letter s

	Vowel Sign		Name of vowel
	Invisible	a		muktaa
		aa		kannaa
		i		sihaaree
		ee		bihaaree
		u		aunkarh
		oo		dulainkarh
		e		laanvaan
		ai		dulaanvaan
		o		horhaa
		au		kanaurhaa

 

Consonant and vowel sign		Sound	Pronunciation
s		sa	a in about
sw		saa	a in part
is		si	i in it
sI		see	ee in see
su		su	u in put
sU		soo	oo in food
sy		se	a in cake
sY		sai	a in man
so		so	o in show
sO		sau	o in bought

You may note that the vowels are divided into five pairs. In the first three, the distinction is between a short and long sound, for example between u and oo. In the last two pairs distinction is between closed and open sounds so e is closed and ai is open sounding.

Independent vowels

The independent form of vowels can occur in three ways. First, when the vowel comes at the beginning of a word or a syllable, second in those instances where two vowel sounds are required as a consonant cannot support two vowels, and third, in a diphthong-when two vowels are present in one syllable. In fact one of the features of Punjabi is the presence of many diphthongs, sometimes with three vowel sounds in one word with no consonant, for instance EwieEw  aaiaa, (he) came.

Independent vowels are represented by dependent vowels carried by the first three letters of the Gurmukhi alphabet.

 oorhaa            airhaa            eerhee

oorhaa and eerhee are never used on their own. These three vowel signs do not represent any consonant sounds. They must be accompanied by their allocated vowel signs. Their main function is to denote their own respective vowel sounds. They are founder, basic or parent vowel bearers representing the ten sounds. However, the pronunciation of both independent and dependent vowels is the same. 

Formula
	u is added to		to give	au
	oo is added to		to give	aU
	o is added to consonant letters and when added to consonant sign k to give ko		to give	A
invisible sign				E
	aa is added to		to give	Ew
	ai is added to		to give	EY
	au is added to		to give	EO
	i is added to		to give	ie
	ee is added to		to give	eI
	e is added to		to give	ey

Top

Auxiliary Signs

 

 1.Nasal Signs

 (A) ibMdI Bindee

It serves to add a nasal sound to a particular vowel. Bindee is used with kannaa, laanvaan, dulaanvaan, bihaaree, horhaa and  kanaurhaa and the independent forms of vowels where a is the bearer. Its sound is same as 'n' in band, grand, slang, grant. For example

kaan (crow) = kwN                                                                            

gaan (cow) = gwN    

(B) itSpI Tippee

It serves to add a nasal sound to a particular vowel. Tippee is used with muktaa, sihaaree, aunkarh and dulainkarh only. It is not used upon a (instead Bindee is used with this letter) and last letter of a word. Its sound is same as 'n' in punch, lunch. For example

amb (mango) = EMb

panchi (bird) = pMCI

jhandaa (flag) = JMfw

2| EDk Adhak 

The function of EDk adhak is to allocate a double sound to the particular letter that it is assigned to. It should be placed above the preceding letter that is to be read twice, however, in practice it is placed between the two letters. Therefore, when the adhak occurs between two letters, it is the second of the two that is to be repeated. For example, in the Punjabi word for boundary hSd hadd, the adhak affects the letter d d changing the sound of the word from had to hadd. In some cases another vowel sound may come in between the two letters, but the adhak still affects the second letter, for example in the word bSicA bachchio, the adhak comes before the sihaaree vowel but still affects the letter c ch, so it is pronounced chch. The adhak is a very important, though subtle device, as two letters without an adhak give rise to completely different meanings. For example kd kad means when, whereas kSd kadd means height.

Tones

One of the unique features of Punjabi, in the variety of modern South Asian Languages, is the presence of pitch contours. These change the meaning of the word depending on the way it sounds. In technical terms these are called �tones� and there are three types: low, high and level. The Punjabi tone system is far less complex than Chinese, the best known tone language. The low tone is characterised by lowering the voice below the normal pitch and then rising back in the following syllable. In the high tone the pitch of the voice rises above its normal level falling back at the following symbol. The level tone is carried by the remaining words. Tones are not represented by any letters or symbols in the Gurmukhi script.

Low tone				Level tone				High tone
Jw	jhaa		peep	cwE	cha-aa		desire	cwh	chaah		tea
GoVw	ghorhaa		horse	koVw	korhaa		whip	kohVw	kohrhaa		leper
GVI	gharhee		watch	kVI	karhee		link of a chain	kVHI	karhee		turmeric curry