User:Sirajsaeed289

Q) IS Saraiki a dialect of Punjabi Language ? Q) is saraiki punjabi languege ?

No saraiki is totally different langauge from punjabi. To me, Saraiki is as different from (Standard) Punjabi as, say, Braj is from Standard Hindi. The difference isn’t as simple as Hindi-Urdu, where you can use a few different words and accent.

Saraiki and Standard Punjabi differ in some basic vocabulary, the way they conjugate and inflect verbs, tonality, and Saraiki has some sounds that are not present in Standard Punjabi.

Basic Vocab and Inflections

I’ll write a short paragraph in both.

English: “Dad, where are you going? I wanna come with. Brother hurt his mouth, he’s asked me to get some medicine. We’ll get something for dinner too, get that done.” Punjabi: “Papa, kitthe jaa rahe ho? Menu vi tuhade naal jaana hai. Prah de muh te zakham ho gaya si. Menu keh riha si “Dawa le aayin”. Assi dinner lai khaana vi le aavange, saada oh kamm vi ho jaavega.”

Saraiki: “Papa, kitthaan vende pyo? Meko vi tuhade naal vanjhne. Bhrah de waat te zakham thi gaya hayi. Meko aada pya hayi “Dawa ghin aavin”. Assaan dinner vaaste khaana vi ghin osoon, saada oh kaam vi thi vesi.

Hindi-Urdu (for good measure): “Papa, kahan jaa rahe ho? Mujhe bhi aapke saath jaana hai. Bhai ke muh pe chot lag gayi thi. Mujhe keh raha tha “Dawaai le aana”. Hum dinner ke liye khaana bhi le aayenge, humaara woh kaam bhi ho jaayega.”

You see? I chose these sentences specifically to highlight the differences, of course, but one can still see just how similar (and different) they are. Mutually intelligible to a great degree, but unmistakably different.

Phonology

My Delhi accent probably isn’t theth enough, but Saraiki differs from Standard Punjabi in one very interesting way: it uses voiced implosives.

These are rare sounds, which I don’t think are present in any other Indo-Aryan language except maybe Sindhi. Punjabi, like most Indo-Aryan languages, uses voiced stops instead.

Two examples:

/ɠ/ — Voiced velar implosive Written as ڳ Example: او ہِک ڳانہہ ہے Oh hik ɠaanh he (“That’s a cow”) /ᶑ/ — Voiced retroflex implosive Written as ݙ Example: ݙاہ وج گے ہن ᶑaah wajj ge hin (“It’s 10 o’clock”) These are the only ones I know. If there are others, I’ve either probably never used them, or have been saying them wrong (hehe)

Finally, I also think Saraiki is not tonal, while Punjabi is. For example, instead of pronouncing ਘਰ/گھر (“home”) as /k’àr/ — with a ‘k’ and a high-falling tone — I’ve always just said /ghar/. And similarly, instead of /pr’àh/, we say /bhrah/.

Socio-Cultural Aspects

Coming to the end, there are important socio-cultural aspects that distinguish Saraiki from Standard Punjabi.

Saraiki has its own body of literature, songs, and poetry.Famous poets of old like the legendary Khwaja Ghulam Farid, wrote almost as much in Saraiki as in (any other form of) Punjabi.

Given all that, it may seem a tad trivializing to call Saraiki a dialect of Punjabi, since that may imply lack of linguistic prestige.It implies there is a “correct” or “better” form of Punjabi, while Saraiki — a rich and beautiful language in its own right — is in some sense a lesser version of it.

For similar reasons, there is less of a prerogative to call Braj a dialect of Hindi as readily as this. It’s largely true, and in a meeting of linguists there would be no hesitation in saying it (rightly so), but in general, this fails to bring the whole story to the table.

I don’t feel that strongly about this, only kind of. Maybe that’s because I am perfectly comfortable speaking Punjabi (a little more than Saraiki), so the loss doesn’t feel as big. But even so, I suppose I’m more committed to identifying a separate Saraiki linguistic identity, because where I grew up, it has largely been absorbed by the all-encompassing term “Punjabi”. All nuance lost, almost no ethnolinguistic character preserved.

I am ethnically Punjabi (well, half anyway). But Punjabi is not the language my dad and his family speaks — not the kind you hear on the streets of Delhi, or in the latest Punjabi-Bollywood songs, or even the kind that most older Punjabi people speak (though that’s closer I guess).

Do I really need to acknowledge that there is anything non-standard about this language I know, listen to, relate to? In any sense? I mean, it has a script, literature, famous poets and writers, university courses in it…. all of that. So why?