By A.Qavi Shakoor

Date:01-05-05

Source: Dawn

VISUALIZE the following scene: a gorgeous, voluptuous heroine, naively ignorant of her winning advantages, and a prey to gnawing doubts and gloomy misgivings, allows herself to be sneeringly treated like a two-bit extra or a dime-a-dozen chorus girl.

Punjabi is a rich and beautiful language, loved and used by a gifted and energetic population of over 120 million — in Pakistan, India, the Middle East, the UK and North America.

Such an important language is rightly expected to be counted among the major communication vehicles of the world. But, as luck (or bad luck) would have it, this great language is generally given the low grade of a boli (dialect), supposed to be spoken by a rather nondescript community of less than a million souls. What are the factors that have conspired to deprive Punjabi of its due status? When, if at all, would this important medium of expression rise to its true linguistic eminence?

Let us blurt out the bitter truth. Punjabi, unlike Sindhi or Pushto, has always played second fiddle to Urdu, allowing itself to be overshadowed by the national tongue, the important, written language, and the medium of erudition and literature; so much so that educated Punjabis have always tended to distance themselves from their own mother tongue, treating it like a ‘country cousin’, and using it solely to communicate with close relatives, friends, servants, unlettered trades people, and, of course, the rough and tough law enforcing minions. No doubt, they love Punjabi songs (and jokes) and are diverted by Punjabi films and stage shows, but all this enjoyment, this association with the Punjabi language, is on the sly, absolutely unofficial. When it comes to the serious business of life and learning, Punjabi disappears from the scene, leaving it to Urdu and English. Why? Mainly because of its Achilles’ heel, its great weakness — its script.

Across the border Punjabi is written in the Gurumukhi Lipi, an improvement upon Hindi’s unwieldy Devangagari Lipi, while, on our side of the divide, Punjabi makes do with the Persian Nastaaleeq. And here is the crux of the problem. Since before 1857 Nastaaleeq script has so closely been identified with Urdu that 99 per cent of the Punjabis would prefer to express themselves in Urdu, even if they happen to write a letter to their family members.

High time indeed to rescue Punjabi from the mire of an unsatisfactory alphabet and equip it with an efficient method of writing. Courage is required — cool courage that brooks no nonsense and meets opposition with an iron determination.

The best solution for Punjabi would be a left-to-right, preferably Latinized script, but certainly not the clumsy Roman version, hastily hammered out by the clerks of the East India Company to serve the limited needs of the Tommies. Scholarly effort, suffused with creative imagination, is required to develop an efficient system for Punjabi, and offer solutions for a handful of problems. In this respect, the following guidelines should be found helpful:

1. Accented and umlauted vowels, and diacritical marks on consonants must be avoided, because they act as roadblocks and break the speed of a typist. Compare English with French to realize the advantage of having a single ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘c’, etc.

2. No new letters need be introduced; 26 letters of English would suffice. In fact, W and X may become redundant, further simplifying the lingo.

3. In view of our close association with English, we had better adhere to the ‘formats’ and ‘patterns’ of that language.

4. Unlike Urdu, Punjabi can easily do away with the four Arabic Z-sounding letters and use Z for ‘ze’, ‘zal’, ‘zaad’ and ‘zoi’; H for the big ‘ha’ as well as the small ‘ha’, S for ‘sa’, ‘seen’ and ‘saad’, T for ‘ta’ for ‘ta’ and ‘twa’, and vowels for both ‘alif’ and ‘ain’.

A language consists of sounds (consonants) and indicators (vowels). Let us first take care of the Punjabi vowels, which are given below:

1. Short a and long aa

2. Short i and long ie

3. Short u and long ou

4. Long e (no short e)

5. Long o (no short o)

Diphthongs should be represented by combining two vowels, for example, ai, as in khair, oi, as in koi, ua, as in bua, etc.

Aspirated sounds can best be produced by the addition of an ‘h’ to the consonant, for example, bha, pha, jha, kha, gha, and chha.

As started earlier, a number of problems do arise when such revolutionary changes are introduced. The following expected difficulties should be handled effectively:

a. Arabic ‘Ghain’ and ‘Kha’. Not needing separate symbols these sounds can easily be merged with the Punjabi ‘Gha’ and ‘Kha’.

b. Hollow N representing nasal sound of vowels, as in French Vin. While prose does not need it, some arrangement can easily be made to express it in Punjabi poetry.

c. Zh sound (the French j) is non-existent in Punjabi, but in literary text ‘zh’ would suffice. As regards the good old Q, uncomfortable in the Punjabi throat, it should continue to be used in words of Arabic origin.

d. Hard ‘r’ can be expressed by ‘rh’, as is already being done, and should also cover the aspirated sound, where necessary, for example, ‘garh’ as in Khangarh.

But what about the nasalized hard ‘r’? In speech, hard ‘r’ frequently gets nasalized, in the same way as ‘k’ becomes aspirated in the American throat. By adding ‘h’ to ‘n’ we can take care of this quaint Sanskrit sound, as shown in the following line of Muneer Niazi:

Kujh sahunu maranh da shauq vi si

e. Given that both soft and hard alveolars (‘t’ and ‘d’) are used in Punjabi, their representation in the new script would constitute the most retractable, the most baffling problem. As a ready solution one could decide to use ‘t’ and ‘d’ for the soft sounds and ‘ty’ and ‘dy’ for hard sounds. Scholars’ ingenuity and resourcefulness would be tested in this area.

Salvos of criticism would undoubtedly be fired from a number of battlements, especially from the citadels of ‘old guards’ and custodians of national heritage. But once the new script has formally been adopted, the storm is bound to collapse like soapsuds. The school-going new generation, already in love with English, would relish it like chocolate, while their parents and grandparents may grudgingly swallow it as a bitter (but salubrious) pill.

Let us see how Punjabi would look in its new costume. An excerpt from the renowned Punjabi poet Sharif Kunjahi’s comment on Prof Anwar Masood’s poetry is given below:

“Zindagi di taash kheydyan valean vichon eknan nu atkal naal be rang patte dene te aapon rang vale rakh laine oh tazaad e jehrha aj da vatiera ban gaya hoya e, te har koi eh atkal sikkhan pichhe lagga hoya e je kis tarhan shatoutan vich mirchan ralaa ke vech sake.”

And now think of the monumental benefits that would ensure at once. Punjabi journalism, barely existent today, would rub shoulders with the most glittering and influential dailies and periodicals of the world, including electronic journalism. Punjabi, no less than English, would soon become a fit language for teaching Science, Maths, Engineering, Accountancy, etc. Classical Punjabi literature would not take more than a year to get converted into computer databases, and everybody should become familiar with the new script in a few years. (At most, one generations of the population might be disturbed, but the following generations would be perfectly at home with the new script.) Scholars and lexicographers will immediately be required to play their crucial role, aiming to enlarge and enrich Punjabi’s vocabulary, refine and formalize its grammar and usage, develop terminologies in various fields, including acronyms, logograms and abbreviations, and compile dictionaries and other reference books.

This is indeed a simple solution, and hopefully a logical and efficient one. But used as we are, as a nation, to falling for grandiose, high-sounding, and complicated solutions, shouldn’t we find it rather simplistic, quite unimpressive and almost laughable?

Let the gorgeous, voluptuous heroine, decked out in her new, shimmering costume, discover her true self, and fill the nation’s linguistic horizon with the radiance of her conquering beauty.