Learn Punjabi Gurmukhi And Pronouns

[anon]

I'm currently reading "An introduction to the Sacred Language of the Sikhs". Im on page 20, lesson one and its going over basic pronouns.

Firstly can anyone vouch for this book as a good way to learning punjabi well enough to start reading Japji Sahib?

Secondly the section about pronouns is contradicting other sources... for instance in this book the first person pronoun is ਹਉ. On wikipedia and alot of begginers resources it is ਮੈਂ. which is correct? the book, wiki or both?

The book also says that "For the third person there is no true personal pronoun. the demonstrative pronoun meaning "that, that one", may be used as the equivalent of a third person pronoun" and it gives this as ਸੋ. Wheras wiki gives the third person pronoun as ḗ.

Any clarification would be greatly appreciated!

 

[spnadmin]

Re: Pronouns

anon ji

My reply is not to be taken as 100 percent correct. However, I have used the book you are studying right now. You have to take into consideration the difference between the Punjabi that is the sacred language of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji and modern Punjabi which comes under the influence of several centuries of change.

1. ਹਉ AND ਮੈਂ are both used in Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji depending on context.

2. ਸੋ is used at times and omitted at times in Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji

This may be frustrating. However, remember that an entire book Guru Granth Darpan was written by Professor Sahib Singh so that modern Punjabi speakers would be able to understand Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji.

If your goal is to read Japuji Sahib, then concentrate on the book Sacred Language of the Sikhs and forget about modern Punjabi for the time being. It can be confusing even with dictionaries at your side.

You can move on. I recommend you first learn to read SGGS and then move onto modern Punjabi.

 

[aristotle]

Re: Pronouns

anon Ji,
Contrary to popular belief, majority of language used in Guru Granth Sahib bears little resemblance to modern day Punjabi.

Gurbani was contributed by a number of authors belonging to different parts of the subcontinent, so it is but natural that hues of multiple languages and dialects are contained in the Gurbani.
Though Bani of Guru Amardas Ji, Bhagat Baba Farid Ji and to some extent that of Guru Nanak Sahib carries heavy tones of modern day Punjabi, the vast majority of the language can be classified under a heterogenous Sant Bhasha ( www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sant_Bhasha).

Long story short, the first thing you would like to do is understand the Gurmukhi script, which should be quite easy. Next, don't jump directly to modern Punjabi, rather first try to gain a working knowledge of Gurbani grammar, then proceed on to Punjabi if you want to. Even if you concentrate solely on grammatical formats first, that should go a long way.
Rest spnadmin Ji has summed it up well.

 

[Ishna]

*happy dance* I'm so glad to know you're studying the book Anon ji. I wish you all the best with it! :kaurkhalsaflagblue:

 

[anon]

Thanks for all the advice everyone. Ill just carry on with the book itself and take it from there

 

[Gyani Jarnail Singh]

haun..is academic..MEIN is colloquial..slanggish...
just like AAP ...and TUUn...aap is more respectful than the colloquial tuun..

Tuun tuun mein mein is slang for quarrel... never would anyone use that in AAP aap !!! HUM is also used for Mein..hamara..is also mera..many many such

This is just the richness of the langauage..in English we have THOU..and YOU...etc

 

[anon]

hi, I had more questions about the book and thought i would post here rather than creating another post.

Excercise 1b of the book gives the sentence: ਸਾਚਾ ਸਾਹਿਬੁ ਏਕੁ ਤੂੰ

Literally "True Lord one You", however the book also says the Definite article "The" and the verb "Is" are often omitted in gurmukhi... however the sentence with these words added makes

"[The] True Lord [is] one you". which also makes no sentence in english unless the word order is changed to "[The] one true lord [is] you".

I know that there are no hard and fast rules to give a literal english version of each sentence but if we take the "True Lord One You" sentence then the way im trying to work things out is as follows:

there are two adjectives in the sentence "True" and "One", in this case the term one is being descriptive rather then the subject or object of an action. And there are two nouns, "Lord" and "You" (you is a pronoun). The issue i am having how do you know which noun to assign the adjectives to? and to make sense of these four words as an English speaker how can i truly know the placement of the the word "is" in this sentence to make sense of it in my head???


EDIT:

I'm doing part 4 of this exercise and i have to translate the sentence to English (It takes to long to get the Punjabi characters): Nirmal Sacha Eik Tu (Literally "PURE TRUE ONE YOU"). Now I can take an educated guess that this means: "You are one, pure and true" or "you who is pure and true are one" or "you are pure true and one" (Where "One" is an adjective). it kindof makes sense but at the same time this early in my learning of gurmukhi i don't want there to be any ambiguity or lack of understanding in my learning as it may lead to problems or bad habits later on...

 

[Ishna]

Anon ji

This is a quick way to get Gurmukhi characters: http://www.jagookhalsa.com/keyboard/gurmukhi-type.php

I've done the exercises up to 4B part 1 and posted my answers and discussion here: http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/learn-punjabi/40814-request-for-assistance-with-marking-tests.html Feel free to carry on with it when you no doubt progress past me, since I'm not finding time to do it so much anymore. I'm hung up on not knowing enough about English grammar - as I read the book I'm having to Google what on earth things like 'transitive verbs' are and I'm struggling to understand basic language concepts like 'subject, object'.

I believe your learning will start to make more sense as you read more lessons, and you'll learn that the gender and number of words helps to identify your nouns, adjectives and verbs and which words they relate to in a sentence, and the way tense is expressed so you know which English word like 'is' and 'are' to use. Shackle will also talk to you about Gurmukhi being poetry and you having to make some assumptions in the translation. At this stage in the book, the very beginning, he's keeping it very simple so naturally you'll have gaps. Keep going, it will become clearer, trust him.

I'm loving your questions, you have a much more conscious way of learning, I tend to absorb and intuit and then although I know this = that I can't explain why.

Keep up the good work.

 

[Gyani Jarnail Singh]

Nirmal Sacha Ek Tu...PURE....TRUE...ONLY The ONE..... YOU !!

Remember GURBANI is POETRY...not PROSE. Even in normal circumstances its impossible to translate POETRY even say from English to English..what more if its Punjabi to English..etc.

SECONDLY what we have to remember is DRISHTEE....drishtee is the way we look at things..the world..
To an ordinary human like us...A B C D E are just Alphabets...useless unless they are joined together to make "Words".... 1..2..3..4..just numbers unless they are used with a $ sign etc...

Gurbani is full of its poetic creativity. Alphabets by themselves mean nothing, yet can be made to mean just about anything by a creative mind. Since the Gurus had deeply spiritual minds, they saw spiritual messages in even just alphabets. The punjabi idiom "Jehi Drishti, Tehi Shresti" is applicable here. The ordinary mortal sees the alphabets as just that, meaningless unless arranged into words because that is his/her drishti - something has to be arranged before they can see meaning in it. But the Gurus and Bhagats were able to see Godly virtues in alphabets. They didnt need alphabets to be arranged before they saw Godly virtues in them.

Bhagat Kabir has a Bawan Akhree too, and Guru Nanak has a Patee Likhee. Similar poetic creativity is appplied to the days of the weeks (Kabir's Din Raen Banee) and to the names of the months (Guru Nanak's and Guru Arjun's Barah Maha). To all of us these are just Alphabets, Names of weekdays..names of MONTHS etc..BUT to the Guru sahibs drishtee...they all have deep meanings and they expressed them in the above mentioned banis...Most of just see the Calendar..and once its 30th JUNE..we tear that away and expose the Brand new JULY (till July 31st that is..then that also goes the same way...and AUG takes over...BUT read the Barah mah and see how the GURU looks at JUNE..JULY ..AUG..etc..)

I hope I made some sense ???

NOTE: Part of this Post was written for a Thread on the ARCOSTIC POETRY Bawan Akhree of Guru Arjun Ji sahib....but while searching for that Thread this one popped up...