can someone help me to learn punjabi?

Tasavur · September 24, 2009, 11:11pm

VQF numero uno: Pakistan V South Africa @ Mohali

You have an inferiority complex (Ehsaas-e-Kamtari).

It’s a shame so many FOB Punjabi Pakistanis have this inferiority complex.

My friend married a FOB and they kept having arguments over which language to teach their children, my ABCD friend was in favour of his mother tongue Punjabi which his fathers, grandfathers and ancestors have spoken for centuries whilst his silly wife was dazzled and brainwashed by the way Urdu is promoted in Pakistan and thought it beneath her to teach her children Punjabi.

My paternal family are from Pashtunkhwa, only my maternal side are Punjabi but I absoloutley LOVE Punjabi.

My paternal cousins mock Punjabis sometimes saying how ashamed, insecure and inconfident they are in their own identity and so eager to get rid of it by adopting Urdu. I always jump to the defence of my Nanial and say that is not the case but sadly it is true. Other Pakistani ethnicities are proud of who they are, they don’t try and be something they are not but if a Punjabi becomes Metric pass he wants to start speaking Urdu thinking it will make him better.

Respect yourself, or NO ONE will respect you, be proud of who you are. People like you are no better than Brown Sahibs. Language is what defines our ethnicity, other aspects of culture don’t even matter in this day and age. You can still be a patriotic Pakistani and put Pakistan first yet speak Punjabi. Punjabi and Pashto are more Pakistani than Urdu.

I love all Pakistani ethnicities equally but I only identify with two Pakistani languages: Punjabi and Pashto.

Pakistan means more than anything to us, we love our country, not just Punjab or Pashtunkhwa but all its provinces but we can be patriotic without adopting a foreign language (yes Urdu is foreign to most of us, it was born in the land of the enemy: India).

Pakistan is not synonomous to Urdu, Urdu as a national language is a mistake.

Pashtuns want to have nothing to do with Urdu yet they will gladly lay down their lives for Pakistan and their countrymen regardless of language.

We in Pakistan should stop trying to create a fake common culture in Pakistan. Embracing our differences will make us stronger not weaker.

Urdu should have its own seperate province (Karachi), Pakistan should have 6 National Languages (Punjabi, Pashto, Urdu, Balochi, Kashmiri, Sindhi) each for its own province and a Constitutional Language (Classical Arabic: the language of the Qur’aan) because Pakistan wasn’t made in the name of Urdu culture/ethnicity/language as that is the same as Hindi culture/ethnicity/language, Pakistan was made in the name of Islam and the lingua-franca/liturgical-language of Islam is Arabic. I’m not saying adopt Arabic to be try and be Arab, not as a national language but as a constitutional language, it’s our religious language not ethnic, whilst Urdu is neither religious nor ethnic.

I’m Pashtun/Punjabi and Muslim so Pashto, Punjabi and Arabic for me, Urdu is neither the language of my religion nor my ethnicity.

I shouldn’t have insulted Urdu, I just assumed you were an Urdu-Speaking person from Karachi who refer to us Punjabis as uneducated “Daggahs” no matter how educated we become or how fluently we start speaking Urdu.

Urdu might be a beautiful language but it is nothing to do with 90% of Pakistanis, French and Persian are more beautiful but we can’t adopt them because that would be aping something we are not.

Urdu increases our cimilarities with the detested India because it’s a dialect of the same language as Hindi. Urdu was born on Indian soil and imported to the Indus Valley aka Pakistan from there. If we stop enforcing Urdu in Pakistan then Pakistan will Insha Allah move further away from India because Punjabis will only have linguistic similarities with Indian Punjabis and not other Indians, that’s bareable as Indian Punjabis are generally cool (except for a few exceptions), there’s not that many Sindhis in India and Pashtuns/Balochis will have no similarities with India if we stop making them speak Urdu (well they don’t anyway but sadly Urdu is Indianising them)..

…But if everyone in Pakistan starts speaking Urdu and everyone in India Hindi then Tamils and Pashtuns will become one if future generations all turn secular… OOOOhhh that’s a SCARY thought.

I appreciate your cordial reply.

What you say is not something I radically disagree with - look, my belief is not about the inferiority of Punjabi. How can I say this, when every single one of my family speaks it as their mother tongue? Punjabi is a part of my childhood and a part of my identity.

But, and this is my point, to each his own. My preference of Urdu over Punjabi isn’t anything to do with feelings of inferiority at being Punjabi - no, in fact, I love Punjabi food, Punjabi culture and Punjabi dress. It’s just because as a person with a deep interest in languages and poetry I have always been drawn to Urdu because I see it as a language of poetry. Now you may disagree, and I can certainly see how you can appreciate the *qalm *of Baba Farid or Waris Shah, but this is the way it is: we are all different.

Having said that, as beautiful as Urdu is to me, Farsi is sweeter. I have a very close Iranian friend and when they speak Farsi, I want to sit there and listen for hours. In my opinion, Pakistan needs to move away from India and more towards our Eastern neighbours - purely because religion should transcend all bounds and we are closer to the Muslim world than to India despite the cultural similarities that Bollywood forces down our throat. I actually 1000% agree with your assertion of having Arabic as the national language and various regional languages. This is something I am a very strong proponent of.