Punjabi Voice Over Agency

Everything you never needed to know about speaking Punjabi

It’s a long alphabet
There are two Punjabi alphabets, the Indic script is called the Gurmukhi alphabet and the Arabic scipt is called the Shamukhi alphabet. Both have 41 letters which are made up of 10 vowels and 30 consonants.

Official in Delhi
The Punjabi language is an official language in Delhi and elsewhere in India it is a scheduled language which means the government are obligated to protect it. In Pakistan you will hear spoken Punjabi, but it is not recognised as an official language.

Five Rivers
Punjab is made up from two Persian words Panj which means five and aab which means water. This is because there are five major rivers running through the state of Punjab and they are the Chenab, Jehlum, Sutlej and the Beas and the Ravi.

Lucky child
Any child that is born under the planet Venus or Sukra is considered lucky. They will l have a prosperous and successful life with high status and good health.

The Bread Basket
Punjab is a very fertile region due to its five rivers. It is also known as the bread basket of India because it produces 17% of India’s total wheat production and 84% of the land is used for cultivation.

Lassi comes from the Punjab
Lassi is in fact buttermilk. It is a traditional drink in the Punjab region. It’s a very healthy drink with vitamin B, calcium and potassium which is said to aid digestion and improve gut health.

Superstitions
The Punjabi people are quite superstitious. Apparently when children are growing up, they are told not to cut their nails at night, leave a broom on the bed or cross paths with a black cat. Nobody seems to know whey you shouldn’t do these things, but they are all thought to bring bad luck.

A busy Temple
According to the Guinness Book of Records the most visited place in the world is the Golden Temple in Amritsar. In Punjabi it is known as Harmandir Sahib which translates to the abode of God. It is the most important shrine in Sikhism which was founded in Punjab more than 500 years ago.

Punjab and Pakistan
In 1947 Punjab was split into two separate regions India and Pakistan. The Indian Punjab shares its border with Pakistan Punjab. Every year during the independence day of each country a border ceremony is held. But every day they also have a lowering of the flags ceremony at the Attari-Wagah border. The soldiers, at the start of the procedure do a dance like manoeuvre which consists of raising their legs as high as possible and then they march up to each other before finishing the ceremony by lowering the flags.

The winter festival
One of Punjabi’s most popular festivals is the Lohri or winter festival. It marks the passing of the winter solstice, and the people celebrate the end of winter. It is an official holiday in Punjab and both Sikhs and Hindus take part in the festivities.

A short history on the Punjabi language

Punjabi belongs to the Indo-Aryan group of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It is one of the most widely spoken of the Indo-Aryan languages, and the only one that is tonal.

Most experts agree that all of the Indo-Aryan languages developed in three stages: Old Indo-Aryan, or Sanskrit; Middle Indo-Aryan (including the Prakrit and Apabhramsha phases); and Modern Indo-Aryan.

Punjabi evolved from Shauraseni Prakrit, the main language of medieval northern India, emerging as a distinct language around the 11th or 12th century. The first major Punjabi poet is generally considered to be Fariduddin Ganjshakar (born towards the end of the 12th century).

The development of the language has been heavily influenced by Urdu, Hindi, Persian and English. There is a significant degree of mutual intelligibility with Urdu and Hindi. Punjabi is the native language of the Punjabi people, who live in the historic Punjab region of Pakistan and India.

Which countries have Punjabi as a national language?

Punjabi is one of India’s 22 scheduled languages, and the first official language in the Indian state of Punjab. It has no official status in Pakistan (where Urdu and English are official), despite the fact that Punjabis constitute the largest ethnic group (around 45% of the population).

How many people speak Punjabi as their first language?

It is estimated that approximately 130 million people speak Punjabi as their first language worldwide. Around 75 million of these live in Pakistan (where it is the most widely spoken language), and over 30 million live in India (where it is the 11th most widely spoken language).

There are large communities of Punjabi speakers in many other countries, particularly Canada (where it is the third most widely spoken language) and the UK (where it is the fourth most widely spoken language).

Did you know…

• In India, the major Punjabi dialects include Majhi, Doabi, Malwai and Powadhi. In Pakistan, dialects include Majhi, Pothohari, Hindko and Multani. Majhi is Punjabi’s prestige dialect, and is spoken in the historical region of Majha.
• Punjabi is one of the only languages in the world that is written in two mutually unintelligible scripts. In India, it is written using the Gurmukhi script, a member of the Indic family of scripts. This goes from left to right and its name derives from the Old Punjabi word guramukhi (“from the mouth of the Guru” – after the guru who standardised the script in the 16th century). In Pakistan, Punjabi is written using the Shahmukhi script, a version of the Urdu script. This goes from right to left and its name means “from the King’s mouth”.
• Punjabi’s influence continues to spread thanks to Bollywood, with most Bollywood films now including Punjabi vocabulary as well as songs sung in Punjabi, to appeal to audiences in neighbouring Pakistan.

The Pakistani economy

Pakistan’s economy is the 27th largest in the world in terms of purchasing power parity, and 44th largest in terms of GDP. However, the country’s population is the sixth largest in the world, which means that the GDP per capita is low.

The economy has suffered from internal political disputes, low levels of foreign investment and high inflation. Two-fifths of the population is employed in agriculture. Industries include textiles, chemicals and food processing.