Bilingualism
in Punjab
A Case Study in Lyallpur
City
Tomio
Mizokami
1. Urdu and Punjabi are homogeneous languages. Both belong to the
Indo-Aryan linguistic family. Urdu, whose difference from Western Hindi lies only
in style, is the descendent of Sauraseni Apabhramsa, while Punjabi is a
deri-viative of Paisaci Apabhramsa. A geographical classification of modern
Indo-Aryan languages shows that Punjabi belongs to Ud i cya and that Western Hindi
to Mad hyad esiya.1) But Urdu is a very peculiar language in the sense that it
cannot be classified merely on the geographical basis. Urdu, which might be
called "Persianized Hindi," has been a cultural language of Muslims not only
in northern India but also all over the Indian sub-continent. It employs
nume-rous Arabo-Persian vocabularies, which, one may presume, match with the
Mus-lim sentiment.
Urdu has been a national language of Pakistan, to which soil the origin of
the language is not traced back. The number of people who speak Urdu as a
mother tongue in Pakistan is only 7.6% (Census of Pakistan 1961). Most of
them are refugees from India. But this does not mean that Urdu is the language
which was completely newly brought or introduced into Pakistan. The same
census shows that 50. 4% of the people use Urdu besides their mother tongue.
Especially Punjab, which is the largest populated province in Pakistan, has
always shown the patronage for Urdu.2) It may be pointed out that Urdu has
always been the dominant vehicle for Islamic culture in Punjab. There has never
been a conflict between Urdu and Punjabi. The Punjabi people are generally
believed to be one of the most tolerant races in the Indian sub-continent. Some
aspects of mutual contact between Urdu and Punjabi in Punjab are discussed
in the next sections based on some field work in Lyallpur City.3)
2. Some linguists agree that the transfer of morphemes is facilitated
-1042-ween highly congruent structures.4) This theory may apply to the case of Urdu and Punjabi which are the languages of common heritage.
Generally speaking, the interference of Urdu into Punjabi is primarily mor-phemic and lexical, meanwhile phonic interference of Punjabi is perceptible in Urdu used by Punjabis. Some examples:
(1) /kam karan wala l (P.) 'worker' is often replaced by /kam karne wala l (U.), (2) Punjabi present participle /d/ or l nd / is often interfered by Urdu / t / as in
l karta hail 'he does,' but the colloquial form of juncture /d,-e / does not become / tce / as in / kard ce / 'he does.' Mixture of / d / and / t / does not occur. eg. lmilda julda hail 'he resembles' either becomes lmilta julta hail or remains as it is, never / mi ld a j ulta hail.
(3) l us d iyd kitabd / 'his books' changes into l us ki kitabd /, but / ki / never becomes / kiya / corresponding with / d iya /.
(4) h in Punjabi numerals are very often replaced by / s / in Urdu numerals. eg. / unnis sau curare-id/ '1954' etc.
(5) Urdu cardinals often interfere with Punjabi cardinals. eg. l d asri jamat vic l 'in the second class' etc.
(6) Urdu postposition /ko/ pushes away Punjabi /null. eg. /sab ko hona cahida hail 'all should be (so)'. l pas / replaces l kol /. eg. I mere pas hona cahid a hai / 'I must have (it)' etc.
(7) Urdu interrogative pronouns l kya l replaces Punjabi Ikil.
(8) Some adverbial phrases of Urdu are used instead of Punjabi adverbial rases. eg. I kam se kam / 'at least' is used instead of / kato kat /.
(9) Urdu conjunction / agar l 'if' is used instead of /j e l specially in urban
areas.
Examples of Urdu lexical interference into Punjabi are innumerable. Some of them are used so frequently that they have become almost a part of the Punjabi vocabularies. Examples of such words which are in concurrence with more popular Punjabi words, if not excelling the Punjabi equivalents: l larka l (U.): /munda / (P.) 'boy', /larki / (U.): l kuri l (P). 'girl', /bat/ (U.): /gall (P.) 'matter', / accha / (U.): / canga / (P.) 'good' etc. Consequently sometimes such mixtures like /acchi gall or / cangi bat / 'a good thing' occur.
3. The transfer of / Z / and /V/ is the most typical example of the Punjabi phonic interference into Urdu. Retroflex W usually occurs between vowels. eg. / talc / 'lock,' l sali l 'sister-in-law' etc.
(n) appears in Punjabi very commonly. eg. l pani l 'water,' l apna l 'own' etc. The contrast between (n) and (n) is phonemic in Punjabi, but not in Urdu. eg. l pun l 'virtue' (<skt. punya): l pun l 'filter' etc.
The Gurumukhi script used in India has seperate characters for / n / and /V/ like the Devanagari script. But the Urdu script (slightly modified Persian script) has no character for /z/. Hence /pun/ and /pun/ are expressed in the same script in Punjabi, also. This fault was removed when in 1976 Pakistan Punjabi Adabi Board (Lahore) proposed to use a newly contrived letter A for /n/ as in B / pani l 'water', C / kanak l 'wheat' etc,5) but it will take much time for this new letter to take root and spread among Punjabi people, because Punjabi is rarely used as a written language in the Punjab itself, which shows a contrast with the Indian Punjab.
Tone is also phonemic in Punjabi, but it does not exist in Urdu. eg. l kora l 'horse': l kora l 'leper', l pai l 'brother': l pai l 'she put' etc.
This tone is often transferred to Urdu when spoken by Punjabi natives. It is also well-known that the transfer of the accent causes the shortening of (a) in the first syllable. eg. l bazar l (< bazar) 'market', l azad l (<azad) 'free,' /asman / (<asman) 'sky' etc.
There is also an example of the interference of Punjabi morpheme into Urdu morpheme as in lap likhte ho l 'you (hon.) write.' In this example lap likhte hail (U.) was interfered by /tusf likhde o/ (P.).
Urdu is preferably used for the writing purpose to Punjabi as mentioned above. Usually people write in Urdu when they write letters, but even so, Punjabi vocabularies are sometimes used in Urdu sentences. This is also a kind of lexical interference. I collected one example from the letter which a man was writing to his native place in a village: lap ne bhais ko patthe kyo nah' pae?/ 'why didn't you feed the buffalo ?' The block letters are equivalent to care and dale respectively. People are more familiar with Punjabi terms con-nected with agriculture or cattle-breeding.
Because of structural and lexical similarity between Urdu and Punjabi, many variants of the "code-switching style"6) are observed in actual conversations among Punjabis. For example, next three sentences mean 'A horse eats grass,' P' and P" are the Punjabi variants. U' and U" are the Urdu variants.
(1) kora (p) gas (u') khanda hai (P). (2) kd ra (P') ka (P') khata hai (U). (3) kora (P') ga (P" or U") khata hai (U).
4. Here follows an analysis of 295 samples collected, according to the pre-pared questionnaires, from the six bastis in Lyalipur City. The informants are classified according to their mother tongue as follows: Punjabi 257 (87.1%), Pashto 33 (11. 1%), Urdu 3 (1%), Pothohari7) 1 (0.3%), Baluchi 1 (0.3%). It is natural that the overwhelming majority of the respondents are Punjabis. 'Th
e persons who answered their mother tongue as Urdu are the refugees from India.
The classification by educational qualifications is as follows:
Punjabi... No education 118 (45.9%), 1-5 pass 54 (21%), 6-9 pass 58 (22.6%), matriculation pass 24 (9.3%), intermediate pass 1 (0.4%), M. A. pass 1 (0.4%), no information 1 (0.4%)
Pashto... No education 31 (one is literate), 1-5 pass 1, 6 N 9 pass 1 Urdu... 1-5 pass 2, 6-9 pass 1
Pothohari... 1-5 pass 1 Baluchi... No education 1
The next shows how those who had no school education learned Urdu. pun jabi... During working 20 (17.2%), from friends 11 (9.3%), from
ghbours 7 (5.9%), from family members 1 (0.8%), by seeing films 1 (0.8%), by listening to the radio 1 (0.8%), no information 1 (0.8%), never learned 76 (64.4%)
Pashto... During working 24 (80%), never learned 6 (20%) Baluchi... During working 1
Education proved to have mutual correlativity with language proficiency, whether Urdu or Punjabi, but it is remarkable that the number of those who do not understand Urdu at all is fairly large. May it be called Sprachen kennen
if one can only understand and speak, and Sprachen konnen if one can read and write. Needless to say, Sprachen konnen is more educated than Sprachei kennen. But a remarkable thing was noted: Punjabi Sprache konnen is not necessarily correlative with Urdu Sprache konnen. Many informants confessed' that writing Punjabi was very difficult. This is due to the fact that Punjabi is. not taught at schools. Punjabi is merely a spoken language for almost all the-Punjabis. In church, for instance, the priest preaches in Punjabi, but the Bible is recited in Urdu.
The use (or choice) of language according to situation was also examined. Generally speaking, in more inter-local situations Urdu is used very often.
One-respondent made a very interesting answer that he would speak to village-type persons in Punjabi, and to urban-type persons in Urdu.
Thus in socio-functional status, Urdu is superior and Punjabi is inferior.
1) S. K. Chatterji, The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language, Calcutta,. 1926, p. 7; D. Varma, Hindi Bhasa ka Itihas, Allahabad, 1962, p. 53.
2) See M. K. Sheerani, Punjab me Urdu, Lahore, 1960.
3) The population of Lyallpur City is 822, 263 (Population Census of Pakistan 1972). Lyallpur District is the "core area of Punjabi" like Jhelum, Sialkot and Shaikupura districts. (Asraf Rauf, "Hoary Enigmaticism of Pakistani Languages:
A Challenge" in Scrutiny, Islamabad, 1976, p. 134)
This field work is a part of the survey titled "Rural-Urban Migration and Pattern of Employment in Pakistan" carried out by Osaka City University and University of the Punjab supported by the Ministry of Education of the Japanese ment.
4) U. Weinreich, Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems, The Hague, 1968,. p. 33.
5) Mudhli Lafzali, Lahore, 1976.
6) J. J. Gumperz, Language in Social-Groups, California, 1971, pp. 205-219. 7) Pothohari is a dialect of Western Punjabi. It could be included in Punjabi, but
here it was classified seperately, because this survey is, as it were, on the istic-consciousness.
