Saraiki language
Saraiki is an Indo-Aryan language of the Lahnda group, spoken in the south-western half of the province of Punjab in Pakistan. It was previously known as Multani, after its main dialect.
Saraiki is to a high degree mutually intelligible with Standard Punjabi and shares with it a large portion of its vocabulary and morphology. At the same time in [|its phonology] it is radically different, and has important grammatical features in common with the Sindhi language spoken to the south.
Saraiki is the language of 25.9 million people in Pakistan, ranging across southern Punjab, southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and border regions of northern Sindh and eastern Balochistan.
The Saraiki language identity arose in the 1960s, encompassing more narrow local earlier identities, and distinguishing itself from broader ones like that of Punjabi.
Name
The present extent of the meaning of is a recent development, and the term most probably gained its currency during the nationalist movement of the 1960s. It has been in use for much longer in Sindh to refer to the speech of the immigrants from the north, principally Siraiki-speaking Baloch tribes who settled there between the 16th and the 19th centuries. In this context, the term can most plausibly be explained as originally having had the meaning "the language of the north", from the Sindhi word siro 'up-river, north'. This name can ambiguously refer to the northern dialects of Sindhi, but these are nowadays more commonly known as "Siroli" or "Sireli".An alternative hypothesis is that Sarākī originated in the word sauvīrā, or Sauvira, an ancient kingdom which was also mentioned in the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata.
Currently, the most common rendering of the name is Saraiki. However, Seraiki and Siraiki have also been used in academia until recently. Precise spelling aside, the name was first adopted in the 1960s by regional social and political leaders.
Classification and related languages
Saraiki is a member of the Indo-Aryan subdivision of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. Standard Punjabi and Saraiki are mutually intelligible.In 1919, Grierson maintained that the dialects of what is now the southwest of Punjab Province in Pakistan constitute a dialect cluster, which he designated "Southern Lahnda" within a putative "Lahnda language". Subsequent Indo-Aryanist linguists have confirmed the reality of this dialect cluster, even while rejecting the name "Southern Lahnda" along with the entity "Lahnda" itself. Grierson also maintained that "Lahnda" was his novel designation for various dialects up to then called "Western Punjabi", spoken north, west, and south of Lahore. The local dialect of Lahore is the Majhi dialect of Punjabi, which has long been the basis of standard literary Punjabi. However, outside of Indo-Aryanist circles, the concept of "Lahnda" is still found in compilations of the world's languages.
Dialects
The following dialects have been tentatively proposed for Saraiki:- Central Saraiki, including Multani: spoken in the districts of Dera Ghazi Khan, Muzaffargarh, Leiah, Multan and Bahawalpur.
- Southern Saraiki: prevalent in the districts of Rajanpur and Rahimyar Khan.
- Sindhi Saraiki: dispersed throughout the province of Sindh.
- Northern Saraiki, or Thali: spoken in the district of Dera Ismail Khan and the northern parts of the Thal region, including Mianwali District.
- Eastern Saraiki: transitional to Punjabi and spoken in the Bar region along the boundary with the eastern Majhi dialect. This group includes the dialects of Jhangi and Shahpuri. Most speakers of those dialects, however, tend to identify with Punjabi rather than Saraiki.
When consulting sources before 2000, it is important to know that Pakistani administrative boundaries have been altered frequently. Provinces in Pakistan are divided into districts, and sources on "Saraiki" often describe the territory of a dialect or dialect group according to the districts. Since the founding of Pakistan in 1947, several of these districts have been subdivided, some multiple times.
Status of language or dialect
In the context of South Asia, the choice between the appellations "language" and "dialect" is a difficult one, and any distinction made using these terms is obscured by their ambiguity. In a sense both Siraiki and Standard Panjabi are "dialects" of a "Greater Punjabi" macrolanguage.Saraiki was considered a dialect of Punjabi by most British colonial administrators, and is still seen as such by many Punjabis. Saraikis, however, consider it a language in its own right and see the use of the term "dialect" as stigmatising.
A language movement was started in the 1960s to standardise a script and promote the language. The national census of Pakistan has tabulated the prevalence of Saraiki speakers since 1981.
Geographical distribution
Saraiki is primarily spoken in the south-western part of the province of Punjab. To the west, it is set off from the Pashto- and Balochi-speaking areas by the Suleiman Range, while to the south-east the Thar desert divides it from the Marwari language. Its other boundaries are less well-defined: Punjabi is spoken to the east; Sindhi is found to the south, after the border with Sindh province; to the north, the southern edge of the Salt Range is the rough divide with the northern varieties of Western Punjabi.Pakistan
Today, 25.9 million people from North Sindh, South Punjab, South Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Eastern Balochistan province speak Saraiki.The first national census of Pakistan to gather data on the prevalence of Saraiki was the census of 1981. In that year, the percentage of respondents nationwide reporting Saraiki as their native language was 9.83. In the census of 1998, it was 10.53 out of a national population of 132 million, for a figure of 13.9 million Saraiki speakers resident in Pakistan. Also according to the 1998 census, 12.8 million of those, or 92%, lived in the province of Punjab.
India
As of 2011 census of India, Saraiki is spoken by 109,000 people in India.According to the Indian national census of 2001, it is spoken in urban areas throughout northwest and north central India, mainly by the descendants of migrants from western Punjab after the independence of Pakistan in 1947. Some of these speakers went to Andhra Pradesh and settled there before the independence movement because of their pastoral and nomadic way of life, and these are Muslims. persons report their dialect as Mūltānī and individuals report their dialect as Bahāwalpurī.
Phonology
Saraiki's consonant inventory is similar to that of neighbouring Sindhi. It includes phonemically distinctive implosive consonants, which are unusual among the Indo-European languages. In Christopher Shackle's analysis, Saraiki distinguishes up to 48 consonants and 9 monophthong vowels.Vowels
The "centralised" vowels tend to be shorter than the "peripheral" vowels. The central vowel is more open and back than the corresponding vowel in neighbouring varieties. Vowel nasalisation is distinctive: 'may you go' vs. 'may he go'. Before, the contrast between and is neutralised. There is a high number of vowel sequences, some of which can be analysed as diphthongs.Consonants
Saraiki possesses a large inventory of consonants:In its stop consonants, Saraiki has the typical for Indo-Aryan four-fold contrast between voiced and voiceless, and aspirated and unaspirated. In parallel to Sindhi it has additionally developed a set of implosives, so that for each place of articulation there are up to five contrasting stops, for example: voiceless 'custom' ∼ aspirated 'blister' ∼ implosive 'cobweb' ∼ voiced 'niche' ∼ voiced aspirate 'foam'.
There are five contrasting places of articulation for the stops: velar, palatal, retroflex, dental and bilabial. The dentals are articulated with the blade of the tongue against the surface behind the teeth. The retroflex stops are post-alveolar, the articulator being the tip of the tongue or sometimes the underside.
There is no dental implosive, partly due to the lesser retroflexion with which the retroflex implosive is pronounced. The palatal stops are here somewhat arbitrarily represented with and. In casual speech some of the stops, especially, and, are frequently rendered as fricatives – respectively, and.
Of the nasals, only and are found at the start of a word, but in other phonetic environments there is a full set of contrasts in the place of articulation:. The retroflex is a realised as a true nasal only if adjacent to a retroflex stop, elsewhere it is a nasalised retroflex flap. The contrasts ∼, and ∼ are weak; the single nasal is more common in southern varieties, and the nasal + stop cluster is prevalent in central dialects. Three nasals have aspirated counterparts.
The realisation of the alveolar tap varies with the phonetic environment. It is trilled if geminated to and weakly trilled if preceded by or. It contrasts with the retroflex flap , except in the variety spoken by Hindus. The fricatives are labio-dental. The glottal fricative is voiced and affects the voice quality of a preceding vowel.
Phonotactics and stress
There are no tones in Saraiki. All consonants except can be geminated. Geminates occur only after stressed centralised vowels, and are phonetically realised much less markedly than in the rest of the Punjabi area.A stressed syllable is distinguished primarily by its length: if the vowel is peripheral then it is lengthened, and if it is a "centralised vowel" then the consonant following it is geminated. Stress normally falls on the first syllable of a word. The stress will, however, fall on the second syllable of a two-syllable word if the vowel in the first syllable is centralised, and the second syllable contains either a diphthong, or a peripheral vowel followed by a consonant, for example 'carpenter'. Three-syllable words are stressed on the second syllable if the first syllable contains a centralised vowel, and the second syllable has either a peripheral vowel, or a centralised vowel + geminate, for example 'seventy-four'. There are exceptions to these rules and they account for minimal pairs like 'informing' and 'so much'.
Implosives
The unusual for South Asia implosive consonants are found in Sindhi, possibly some Rajasthani dialects, and Saraiki, which has the following series: / /.The "palatal" is denti-alveolar and laminal, articulated further forward than most other palatals.
The "retroflex" is articulated with the tip or the underside of the tongue, further forward in the mouth than the plain retroflex stops. It has been described as post-alveolar, pre-palatal or pre-retroflex. reports that this sound is unique in Indo-Aryan and that speakers of Multani take pride in its distinctiveness. The plain voiced and the implosive are mostly in complementary distribution although there are a few minimal pairs, like 'doctor' ∼ 'mail'. The retroflex implosive alternates with the plain voiced dental stop in the genitive postposition/suffix, which takes the form of when combined with 1st or 2nd person pronouns: 'my', 'your'.
A dental implosive is found in the northeastern Jhangi dialect, which is characterised by a lack of phonemic contrast between implosives and plain stops, and a preference for implosives even in words where Saraiki has a plain stop. The dental implosive in Jhangi is articulated with the tongue completely covering the upper teeth. It is not present in Saraiki, although contends that it should be reconstructed for the earlier language. Its absence has been attributed to structural factors: the forward articulation of and the lesser retroflexion of.
Aspirated implosives occur word-initially, where they contrast with aspirated plain stops: ' 'sit' ~ ' 'fear'. The aspiration is not phonemic; it is phonetically realised on the whole syllable, and results from an underlying that follows the vowel, thus is phonemically.
The historical origin of the Saraiki implosives has been on the whole the same as in Sindhi. Their source has generally been the older language's series of plain voiced stops, thus Sanskrit ' > Saraiki ' 'be born'. New plain voiced stops have in turn arisen out of certain consonants and consonant clusters, or have been introduced in loanwords from Sanskrit, Hindi, Persian or English. The following table illustrates some of the major developments:
| Sanskrit/ Prakrit | Saraiki | example word |
| b- | ɓ | ' > ' 'many' |
| dv- | ɓ | ' > ' 'another' |
| v- | ɓ | ' > ' 'old' |
| v- | b | ' > ' 'forest' |
| v- | v | ' > ' 'path' |
| j | ʄ | ' > ' 'tongue' |
| jy- | ʄ | ' > ' 'husband's elder brother' |
| -jy- | ʄʄ | ' > ' 'to satisfy' |
| -dy- | ʄʄ | ' > ' 'today' |
| y- | dʒ | ' > ' 'if' |
| ḍ- | ᶑ | Pk. ' > ' 'donkey' |
| d- | ᶑ | ' > ' 'sorrow' |
| -rd- | ᶑᶑ | ' > ' 'to jump' |
| -dāt- | ᶑᶑ | ' > ' 'when' |
| -bdh- | ɖɖ | ' > ' 'cold' |
| -ṇḍ- | ɳɖ | ' > ' 'stick' |
| g | ɠ | ' > ' 'cow' |
| gr- | ɠ | ' > ' 'knot' |
| gr- | ɡ | ' > ' 'village' |
Within South Asia, implosives were first described for Sindhi by Stake in 1855. Later authors have noted their existence in Multani and have variously called them "recursives" or "injectives", while Grierson incorrectly treated them as "double consonants".
Writing system
In the province of Punjab, Saraiki is written using the Arabic-derived Urdu alphabet with the addition of seven diacritically modified letters to represent the implosives and the extra nasals. In Sindh the Sindhi alphabet is used. The calligraphic styles used are Naskh and Nastaʿlīq.Historically, traders or bookkeepers wrote in a script known as kiṛakkī or laṇḍā, although use of this script has been significantly reduced in recent times. Likewise, a script related to the Landa scripts family, known as Multani, was previously used to write Saraiki. A preliminary proposal to encode the Multani script in ISO/IEC 10646 was submitted in 2011. Saraiki Unicode has been approved in 2005. The Khojiki script has also been in use, whereas Devanagari and Gurmukhi are not employed anymore.
Here is an example of Saraiki poetry by Khwaja Ghulam Farid:
Language use
In academia
The Department of Saraiki, Islamia University, Bahawalpur was established in 1989 and the Department of Saraiki, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan was established in 2006. Saraiki is taught as a subject in schools and colleges at higher secondary, intermediate and degree level.The Allama Iqbal Open University at Islamabad, and the Al-Khair University at Bhimbir have Pakistani Linguistics Departments. They offer M.Phil. and Ph.D in Saraiki. The Associated Press of Pakistan has launched a Saraiki version of its site, as well.
Arts and literature
and Sachal Sar Mast are the most celebrated Sufi poets in Saraiki and their poems known as Kafi are still famous.The beloved's intense glances call for blood
The dark hair wildly flows The Kohl of the eyes is fiercely black
And slays the lovers with no excuse
My appearance in ruins, I sit and wait
While the beloved has settled in Malheer I feel the sting of the cruel dart
My heart the, abode of pain and grief A life of tears, I have led Farid
Shakir Shujabadi is a very well recognized modern poet.
Famous singers who have performed in Saraiki include Attaullah Khan Essa Khailwi, Pathanay Khan, Abida Parveen, Ustad Muhammad Juman, Mansoor Malangi, Talib Hussain Dard, Kamal Mahsud, and The Sketches. Many modern Pakistan singers such as Hadiqa Kiyani and Ali Zafar have also sung Saraiki folk songs.Media
Television channels
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Monday said southern Punjab is rich in cultural heritage which needs to be promoted for next generations. In a message on the launch of Saraiki channel by Pakistan Television in Multan, Prime Minister Gilani said the step would help promote the rich heritage of 'Saraiki Belt'.
TV Channel Genre Founded Official Website Waseb TV Entertainment http://www.waseb.tv/ Kook TV Entertainment http://kook.tv.com.pk/ Rohi TV Entertainment http://www.rohi.tv/ PTV MULTAN Entertainment http://ptv.com.pk/ PTV National Entertainment http://ptv.com.pk/ Radio
These are not dedicated Saraiki channels but play most programmes in Saraiki.
Radio Channel Genre Founded Official Website Radio Pakistan AM1035 Multan Entertainment http://www.radio.gov.pk/ Radio Pakistan AM1341 Bahawalpur Entertainment http://www.radio.gov.pk/ Radio Pakistan AM1400 Dera ismaeel khan Entertainment http://www.radio.gov.pk/ FM101 Multan Entertainment http://www.fm101.gov.pk/ FM93 Multan Entertainment http://www.fm101.gov.pk/ FM96.4 Multan Entertainment http://www.fm101.gov.pk/ FM103 Multan Entertainment http://www.fm101.gov.pk/ FM106 Khanpr Entertainment FM98 Lodhran Entertainment FM105 Bahawalpur Entertainment FM105 Saraiki Awaz Sadiq Abad Entertainment