Punjabi languages | |
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Geographic distribution | Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh |
Ethnicity | Punjabis |
Linguistic classification | Indo-European
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Early form | |
Language codes | |
Glottolog | lahn1241 |
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The Punjabi dialects and languages or Greater Punjabi are a series of dialects and languages spoken around the Punjab region of Pakistan and India with varying degrees of official recognition.[7] They have sometimes been referred to as the Greater Punjabi macrolanguage.[8] Punjabi may also be considered as a pluricentric language with more than one standard variety.[9]
Punjabi is a language spoken primarily in the Punjab region, which is divided between India and Pakistan. It is also spoken by Punjabi diaspora communities around the world. Punjabi itself has several dialects that can vary based on geographical, cultural, and historical factors.
The varieties of "Greater Punjabi" have a number of characteristics in common, for example the preservation of the Prakrit double consonants in stressed syllables.[10] Nevertheless, there is disagreement on whether they form part of a single language group, with some proposed classifications placing them all within the Northwestern zone of Indo-Aryan, while others reserving this only for the western varieties, and assigning the eastern ones to the Central zone alongside Hindi.[11]
The age of Old Punjabi: up to 1600 A.D. […] It is said that evidence of Old Punjabi can be found in the Granth Sahib.
As an independent language Punjabi has gone through the following three stages of development: Old Punjabi (10th to 16th century). Medieval Punjabi (16th to 19th century), and Modern Punjabi (19th century to Present).
Surpassing them all in the frequent subtlety of his linguistic choices, including the use of dialect forms as well as of frequent loanwords from Sanskrit and Persian, Guru Nanak combined this poetic language of the Sants with his native Old Punjabi. It is this mixture of Old Punjabi and old Hindi which constitutes the core idiom of all the earlier Gurus.