Urdu Vs Punjabi
Urdu and Punjabi are both commonly used languages in Pakistan – but what is the difference? In this article Haaniya (Y7) will be exploring the similarities, the differences, and why it is so common for people to get confused between the two.
Urdu includes lots of poetry derived words and is a blend of many different languages such as: Persian and Arabic. It dates back to before the partition between India and Pakistan at around the 12th Century, hence why majority of Urdu words can be also recognised as Hindi vocabulary.
Urdu originates long before Punjabi, the name comes from the Turkish word Ordo reflecting the military background of Urdu which was used to communicate in the army. India has many languages such as Tamil and Gujarati and Urdu was and still is a commonly spoken language in India.
Well, you might be thinking, what about Punjabi?
Punjabi emerged at around the 19th century (way later than Urdu) near the Panjab region; made up of the North Western area of India and the Northern area of Pakistan. There are many different dialects of Punjabi such as Mahji and Doabi. The name Punjabi means “the 5 waters”, referring to the 5 major rivers which flow into the River Indus, reflecting a strong connection to the land and the securely tied cultural bond.
Punjabi developed overtime. The locals wanted a shared common language to make trade and daily communication easier. Overtime, speech patterns gradually started changing forming a new language still somewhat like Urdu and Hindi.
What are the differences and similarities between the two?
Punjabi is seen to be spoken by mainly Sikhs as the Panjab region is where Sikhism emerged. It is often referred to as the mother language of the Sikhs depicting its significance to that specific religion. Whereas, Urdu is the main language of Pakistan with over 70 million people speaking it. Often stereotypes and misconceptions are formed that Urdu is only spoken by Muslims or Urdu is where Arabic emerged from – however, those stereotypes are untrue as Urdu is a language spoken by many different cultures and was formed later than Arabic.
On the other hand, there are also many similarities between Urdu and Punjabi. Urdu and Punjabi are both Indo-Aryan languages meaning that they both developed from Sanscript, which is why the grammatical components are quite similar. Furthermore, both languages have a very lively sense of literature – Urdu being renowned for its poetry and Punjabi being renowned for its upbeat and cultural songs.
In conclusion, Urdu and Punjabi are languages developed in quite similar areas and as a result there are lots of similarities, but they retain their own sense of culture.