Learn Punjabi How Many At SPN Are Learning Punjabi?

[namritanevaeh]

Can I ask out of curiosity how many people on here are learning Punjabi as a 2nd language (or 3rd, 4th, etc.)? What was your first language and if it is not a 2nd, what others do you speak?

Also, if you are doing so, was it your family background that got lost somehow, or are you, like me, from an entirely different background/culture (gora or otherwise...asian, black, you name it...) just learning for interest or other reasons?

How long have you been working on it? How far have you gotten? Describe some of your capacities maybe?

Do you have an end goal? If so, what is that? Do you have both short term and long term goals?

Have your goals changed throughout the course of you learning?

What are some of your favourite tools? Do you have something, one single thing you can pin down, as being THE most useful thing you have learned so far?

Anything else you would like to share?

 

[spnadmin]

namritanevaeh ji

In answer to your private message. Somehow this thread was posted originally in "Punjab, Punjabi, Punjabiat." I have moved it to "Learn Punjabi." All should be fine at this moment.

 

[Ishna]

Namrita bhenji

I'm slowly slowly learning Punjabi as a second language. My native language is English, and I learned a small amount of Japanese in school (most of which I've forgotten now).

My background is 100% caucasian, I'm a mixed breed German/English/Scottish/French. Or something. I'm learning Punjabi because of my interest in Sikhi, and I think it would be cool to learn another language. You've gotta keep your mind active, they say, and learning a language certainly gives it a workout.

Um, I've not really been 'working on it' at all, just trying to pick it up as I go along. I haven't gotten very far at all, really, because of that. Most of my focus has been on learning Gurmukhi script which I can read OK now. My pronounciation sucks. I'm a slow learner in general so it's going to take a while for it all to sink in. I bought the book Complete Punjabi about 3 years ago so I guess that's how long I've been really interested.

My end goal is to be able to read and listen to a moderate standard. I'm not too worried if I can't speak it very well. Short term goal is to make it through the Complete Punjabi language book, haha. Then be able to read children's books and other library material, then newspapers maybe, and then more complicated articles.

I would like to learn the classical kind of Punjabi in the Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji. Ultimately everything I learn is so I can learn more about Sikhi.

My goals haven't really changed.

The most useful tool has actually been Google for looking up the basics of language - like what exactly is a pronoun, and what on earth are transitive and intransitive verbs? I never realised that I know so little about even my own language, English!!

I found the most useful thing to learn was around the high degree of inflection in Punjabi. I'm still working on it but it makes a lot more sense now than it did before!

It's also difficult learning Punjabi when you're not used to words that inflect according to grammatical gender. It took a long time for me to get used to the idea of grammatical gender - I kept getting it tangled up in my mind with the gender of the speaker, or the person being spoken to or spoken about, rather than the gender of the words themselves.

It sure is fascinating.

 

[namritanevaeh]

Dhanvaad Ishna-ji!

The gender of words was not foreign to me as they have that in other languages I've studied (german has 3! Masculine, feminine, and neutral!). But they differ from one language to the next so it's just more memorization. *sigh* ;-)

 

[Tejwant Singh]

My first language was English,second-Hindi, third-Punjabi/Gurmukhi, fourth-Sanskrit at school. I learnt Gurmukhi at home through private tutoring before that. This was all till I was 15 and then left for the UK but as our family was a 'reading family' I was an avid reader in the first 3. I understand more Urdu than I can speak. I can not read it though. I would love to learn Urdu and its beautiful calligraphy. As Punjabi was only an oral language before Guru Angad created the Gurmukhi alphabet,it used to be written in Hindi or Shahmukhi- the Urdu form.

I left for Brasil when I was 21 and learnt Portuguese during my 10 year stay there. I am fluent in Portuguese in all 3 aspects- speaking, reading and writing. In fact, my Portuguese is much better than my Hindi now.

The interesting part is that people who speak Portuguese can comprehend Spanish, Italian and French. I can speak, read and understand the first, read and understand most of Italian and a bit of French. This is due to the phonetics of the language which help me understand the other 3 Latin languages but the vice versa is not possible. In other words, people whose native languages are Spanish, Italian and French can not comprehend Portuguese to that degree.

The interesting thing is that the same is true for the Punjabi speaking person who is able to comprehend other indic languages because of the phonetics.

My goals are to be more fluent in Spanish, Italian and French. I get to speak Spanish here in Las Vegas. I would also like to learn Urdu, Arabic, Farsi and Mandarin. Let's see how long it takes me to do that. My main interest in these languages is so I can read the books in original.

 

[namritanevaeh]

That is interesting. I'm fluent in French and I can read large parts of Spanish Italian and Portuguese. But can't speak any of them.

When I first set out to learn punjabi the Gurmukhi script looked so difficult to me. Like completely unattainable. I figured I would learn to speak and use romanized (English characters) punjabi. Ultimately though, a bunch of borrowing of "teach yourself punjabi" books by different authors showed me an issue with this: every "teach yourself" book romanizes the language differently! so it became confusing as to which book showed for example an ń for the second type of N in punjabi versus which book used a capital N, etc. I couldn't keep track of it from one book to the next. Additionally I realized it would really keep me reading teach yourself books or people's romanized Facebook posts forever and never move towards anything more newsworthy. So I bought myself kids' primers around vaisakhi 2013 I think it was and started tracing letters and spelling words out slowly like a kindergartener. It took about a month, then I was reading a bit better. I still read slowly, may always do so, but I read like a young child, recognizing some words that are commonly used ("Singh") by sight alone and some longer more infrequently used words I have to sound out letter by letter. I'm better than when I started and I can read through things like the horoscopes or classifieds in the newspaper and learn new words (talakshuda!).

 

[Ishna]

Tejwant Ji....

... are you saying that the Gurbani we have from Guru Nanak Sahib Ji ... is not written in the same way Guru Nanak would have written it? ... ... if so ... how can we be sure the grammar is correct?

Did Guru Nanak Sahib Ji write his pothis in Hindi, do you think? Do we know?

 

[japjisahib04]

My first language was Hindi, second Panjabi and third English. I learnt Arabic in a private institute in Kuwait and also learned Persian language. I am very fluent in Persian language.

 

[Tejwant Singh]

Tejwant Ji....

... are you saying that the Gurbani we have from Guru Nanak Sahib Ji ... is not written in the same way Guru Nanak would have written it? ... ... if so ... how can we be sure the grammar is correct?

Did Guru Nanak Sahib Ji write his pothis in Hindi, do you think? Do we know?

Ishna ji,

Guru fateh.

My guess is that Guru Nanak wrote the Gurbani in Shahmukhi which uses Urdu alphabet because of the region he was born in. Then his writings must have been converted into Gurmukhi by the Gurus who followed him.

One more interesting thing to notice is that Guru Amar Das was a devout Hindu when he met Guru Angad and became a Sikh at a very advanced age, in his 70's or 80's.

The question arises, did he write his part of the Gurbani in Hindi or in Gurmukhi?

No one knows the answer.

One more interesting part about Guru Amar Das' Gurbani is that most of it is written in tercet-3 line poetry form,rather than in couplets as most of the Gurbani is written. Tercet form of poetry which is quite intricate gives a new dimension to Gurbani and should be chanted in the same way which many of us don't because most of us do not notice the difference because of parroting Gurbani sans observation.

One more pattern which is quite rare in Gurbani is a five line poetry called cinquain, which is also in Guru Granth. People who chant Rehraas may or may not be aware of it for the same reason given above. "Sou purkh Niranjan har purkh Niranjan", Page 10,ਰਾਗੁ ਆਸਾ ਮਹਲਾ ੪ ਸੋ ਪੁਰਖੁ Rāg āsā mėhlā 4 so purakẖ.

 

[swarn bains]

I know Punjabi very well. I can even teach the English speaking people how to pronounce certain letters which are not in their alphabets. It is just the pressure on the tongue and filling or emptying the mouth, pushing the tongue up on the throat or opening the mouth wide. By the way Punjabi language is very old (thousands years) , but it was only a spoken language. Most of Nanak guru's bani is written in Persian alphabets. Pakistan and eastern Punjab Punjabi the spoken language had been for eternity. it came out of sehaskritiy language. Punjabi for a long time was written in Persian alphabets. Urdu came in existence after gurmukhi alphabets. Urdu adopted Persian alphabets that is why it appears to be old but it is not. Most of guru's bani written by our guru's is in Punjabi (sant bhasha) The bani is not governed by grammar but it is governed by the flow of the stanza. Most of the writers of SGGs were illiterate language wise but were spiritually very high and they did not know modern grammar. sometimes changing the alphabets did cause some writing difference which some scholars call it as grammar. Punjabi is a very easy language to learn. The letters and symbols are the way they are written, not like English or many other languagews.Once one lears the alphabets and symbols to pronounce, he or she can read and write punjabi easily. Punjabi is like math. what you see what you read or write. no turn or twist at all. so long

 

[RicktheSikh]

It's definitely on the agenda. English transliteration is good to start off with (I've been studying Sikhi for a couple of months) but when I get a different one from every source I see how flawed they can be. At first I thought I could never learn it. My English speaking American eyes were intimidated by the script, especially the fancy calligraphy style, but upon further study I feel like learning is within the realm of possibility. I made a Mother's Day card for the wonderful Bibi ji that has taken me under her wing and copied a tuk from Guru Granth Sahib ji. It took a few tries on scratch paper but I was able to write it in Gurmukhi block text legible enough for her to read. That and a Basics of Sikhi video in which Sukhmani Kaur explained the phonetic alphabet give me confidence that it can be done. I feel like learning to pronounce Gurmukhi and reading from Gurbani is a great first step, possibly better than learning the spoken language first. Then I could read and possibly memorize the Japji Sahib!