Saraiki language

Saraiki
Spoken in
Total speakers	13.9 million in Pakistan (1998 Population and Housing Census, Pakistan), 68,000 in India (Census of India, 2001) (combined figure for persons claiming either the Multani dialect or the Bahawalpuri dialect)
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan North-Western Zone Saraiki
Writing system	Perso-Arabic script, Gurmukhi script, Devanagari script
Language codes
ISO 639-1	None
ISO 639-2	inc
ISO 639-3	skr
Linguasphere
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Sarāikī (Perso-Arabic: سرائیکی, Gurmukhi: ਸਰਾਇਕੀ, Devanagari: सराइकी), sometimes spelled Siraiki and Seraiki, is a standardized written language of Pakistan belonging to the Indo-Aryan (Indic) languages. Sarāikī is based on a group of vernacular, historically unwritten dialects spoken by over 40 million people across the southern more than half of Punjab Province, the adjacent border region of Sindh Province, and the northwest of Punjab Province,southern districts of Dera Ismail Khan and Tank of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province as well as by nearly 70,000 emigrants and their descendants in India.^[1] The development of the standard written language, a process which began after the founding of Pakistan in 1947, has been driven by a regionalist political movement.^[2][3] The national census of Pakistan has tabulated the prevalence of Sarāikī speakers since 1981.^[4]:46 Sarāikī is the fourth most widely spoken language in Pakistan, behind Punjabi, Pushto (Pashto), and Sindhi; and within Punjab Province it is one of the two major languages.

The standard English language spelling of the name (at least de facto) is "Saraiki". However, into the new millennium, "Saraiki", "Siraiki", and "Seraiki" have all been used in academia and among promoters of Saraiki ethnic consciousness. The language name (in whichever of these spellings) was adopted in the 1960s by regional social and political leaders.

On the origin and spelling of the language name

Saraiki Area Study Center Multan, Inaugurated by PM Pakistan Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani

Historically, the speakers of dialects now recognized as belonging to Sarāikī did not hold the belief that they constituted a cohesive language community or a distinct ethnicity. This consciousness developed among local elites in the years after the founding of Pakistan in 1947 in response to the social and political upheaval caused by the mass immigration of Urdu speaking refugee Muslims from India. Traditionally, the dialects were designated by any of a number of areal or demographic names (see table below), e.g. "Multani" for the dialect spoken around Multan, which has been the largest city in the "Sarāikī" speaking area for centuries. The name "Sarāikī" (or variant spellings) was adopted in the 1960s by regional social and political leaders who undertook to promote Sarāikī ethnic consciousness and to develop the vernaculars into a standardized written language.^[2][3] The word "Sarāiki" originated from the word سوویرا "Sauvirā" ^[5], a state name in old India . By adding adjectival suffix "-ki" to the word "Sauvirā" it became "Sauvirāki". The consonant 'v' with its neighboring vowels was dropped for simplification and hence the name became "Sarāiki". Although George Abraham Grierson reported that "Sirāiki" (that was the spelling he used) is from a Sindhi word sirō,^[3]:388 meaning 'of the north, northern', Shackle asserts that this etymology is unverified and is merely the most plausible one advanced.

The standard Roman script spelling of the Saraiki language name (at least de facto) is "Saraiki"; this is the spelling used by two universities of Pakistan with departments of Saraiki (the Islamia University of Bahawalpur, department established 1989,^[6] and Bahauddin Zakariya University, in Multan, department established 2006)^[7], and by the district governments of Bahawalpur ^[8] and Multan ^[9], as well as by the federal institutions of the Government of Pakistan like Population Census Organization ^[10] and Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation ^[11]. Two of the native scripts, Gurmukhi and Devanagari, use the 'a' spelling (or rather, its native equivalent), which indicates that the vowel of the first syllable is a short /a/. In the Gurmukhi and Devanagari spellings given above, this is manifested by the lack of any vowel diacritic. As is standard for native Indo-Aryan orthographies, the absence of any diacritic over a consonant indicates that a short /a/ is spoken after that consonant.

Geographic distribution and number of speakers

Rahat Multani singing in Urdu and Saraiki, at National Art Gallery, Islamabad

Saraiki is a language of great antiquity in Pakistan. It served as "Lingua Franca" among the people living around i.e. the Bloch and Sindhis, the Pashtoons and Punjabis etc. for centuries. It also remained the language of commerce and trade until recent times. Today over forty million people of Bahawalpur, D.G. Khan, Multan and Sargodha divisions of present Punjab and Dera Ismail Khan speak it as a first language. It is widely spoken and understood as a second language in Northern and Western Sind down to the suburbs of Karachi and in Kachhi plain of Baluchistan.

The vernacular dialects on which Sarāikī is based are native to what is now the southwestern half of Punjab Province in Pakistan, south of the Salt Range of mountains. Sarāikī is also spoken in the north of the neighboring Sindh Province and by a tiny, recent diaspora in Punjab, India. According to the Indian census of 2001, Sarāikī is spoken in urban areas throughout northwest and north central India by a total of about 70,000 people, the descendants of emigrants from western Punjab after the partition of India in 1947.^[12] In Afghanistan, Kandahari, a dialect of Multani/Saraiki is a mother tongue of Afghan Hindus.^[13]

Classification within Indo-Aryan

Sarāikī, Sindhi and Punjabi are all members of the Indo-Aryan subdivision of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. Although Punjabi and Sarāikī are mutually intelligible, they differ in consonant inventory and in the structure of the verb.

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.^[14][15] However, outside of Indo-Aryanist circles, the concept of "Lahnda" is still found in compilations of the world's languages (e.g., Ethnologue).

There is a tendency for some discussions of the Sarāikī dialects and their emerging standard literary language to incorrectly include dialects or languages spoken farther north, in particular Hindko and Modern Panjistani. This error is due to confusing Sarāikī (Grierson's "Southern Lahnda") with Grierson's larger category of Lahnda, within which Grierson included dialects spoken north of the Salt Range. While the more northerly dialects are considerably similar to Sarāikī in linguistic structure, starting with Grierson they have been recognised as definitely distinct from the dialect cluster spoken south of the Salt Range.

Problems in nomenclature

The historical inventory of names for the dialects now called Sarāikī is a confusion of overlapping or conflicting ethnic, local, and regional designations. "Hindki" and "Hindko" -- which means merely "of India" -- refer to various Sarāikī and even non-Sarāikī dialects in Punjab Province and farther north within the country, due to the fact they were applied by invaders from Afghanistan or Persia. One historical name for Sarāikī, Jaṭki, means "of the Jaṭṭs", a northern South Asian ethnic group; but Jaṭṭs speak the Indo-Aryan dialect of whatever region they live in. Only a small minority of Sarāikī speakers are Jaṭṭs, and not all Sarāikī speaking Jaṭṭs necessarily speak the same dialect of Sarāikī. Conversely, several Sarāikī dialects have multiple names corresponding to different locales or demographic groups. 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 "Sarāikī" 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. Until 2001, the territorial structure of Pakistan included a layer of Divisions between a Province and its Districts. The name dialect name "Ḍerawali" is used to refer to the local dialects of both Dera Ghazi Khan and Dera Ismail Khan, but "Ḍerawali" in the former is the Multani dialect and "Ḍerawali" in the latter is the Thaḷi dialect.^[16][17]

Tabulation of dialects

Shackle 1976 has proposed a tentative classification of Sarāikī dialects into six "varieties", wherein variety is defined as a group of dialects. (Shackle's scheme really involves just five "varieties", since he himself observes that Shahpuri, spoken in Sargodha District and parts of neighboring districts, is in truth not a kind of Sarāikī, but instead a dialect of Punjabi with Saraiki features.) The precise geographical distribution of these dialect groups is unknown. The six are dubbed Central (i.e., Multani); Southern (i.e., Bahawalpuri, spoken primarily in Rahim Yar Khan district and in Bahawalpur District south of the city of Bahawalpur); Sindhi (spoken in Sindh province by emigrants); Northern (Thaḷi); Jhang; and Shahpuri.

A list of names in use at one or another time during the 20th century for Sarāikī dialects and dialect groups is compiled in the table below.^[18][19] The dialect names are spelled in the standard Anglicized spelling. 'C' and 'ch' both resemble English 'ch'; 'c' represents an unaspirated sound, 'ch' an aspirated. A macron over a vowel indicates a long vowel.

Number of speakers of Sarāikī Language

The first national census of Pakistan to gather data on the prevalence of Sarāikī was the census of 1981. In that year, the percentage of respondents nationwide reporting Sarāikī as their mother tongue 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.^[21]

In India, Sarāikī is spoken by 56,096 persons who report their dialect as Mūltānī and by 11,873 individuals who report their dialect as Bahāwalpurī.^[12] Other dialects of Saraiki that are spoken by Indian Saraikis include Derawali^[22] Jafri, Siraiki Hindki, Jhangi,Thali, and Jatki.^[23]

Features

Sarāikī and Sindhi both have somewhat similar consonant inventories.^[24] This inventory includes phonemically distinctive implosive consonants, which makes Sindhi and Saraiki unusual among the Indo-European languages (and not just among the Indo-Aryan languages).

Phonology

Vowels

Saraiki has three short vowels, seven long vowels and six nasal vowels.

Consonants

Writing system

There are three writing systems for Sarāikī, though very few Sarāikī speakers—even those literate in other languages — are able to read or write their own language in any writing system. The most common Sarāikī writing system today is the Perso-Arabic script, which has also been adapted for use on computers. Saraiki has a 42-letter alphabet including 37 of the Urdu alphabet and five letters unique to Saraiki. The Saraiki keyboard can also be used for other languages such as Punjabi & Kashmiri. The Devanagari and Gurmukhi scripts, written from left to right, were used by Hindus. Though not used in present-day Pakistan, there are still emigrant speakers in India who know the Devanagari or Gurmukhi scripts for Sarāikī.^[25][26] Traders or bookkeepers wrote in a script known as Langdi, although use of this script has been significantly reduced in recent times. The transliteration from and to Perso-Arabic and Devanagari scripts for Saraiki language can be made online.^[27]

In the process of creating a distinct Sarāikī written language, activists have paid attention to creating a standard script and orthographic norms. Orthographic and linguistic standardization of Sarāikī seems more connected with the politics of identity. Although Saraiki shares four implosive sounds with Sindhi, care was taken so that the Saraiki script and the representation of these symbols should be different from that of Sindhi so that the Sindhis should not lay any claims over Saraiki literature as theirs.

Saraiki in Sindh

In Sindh Saraiki is widely spoken in Kashmore, Jacobabad, Shikarpur and Ghotki.

Saraiki in Balochistan

In Balochistan Saraiki is widely spoken in Barkhan, Naseerabad, Jafarabad and Jhal Magsi.

Saraiki in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

In khyber Pakhtunkhwa Saraiki is native language in Dera Ismail Khan.

Saraiki in India

In India Saraiki is native language in Sri Ganganagar district.

See also

• Saraiki people
• Saraiki literature
• Saraikistan
• Saraiki nationalist movement
• Saraiki Wasaib
• Saraiki Culture
• Bahawalpur (princely state)

Notes

AOA. main hekk riyasti jawan han meda riyasat bwr nawabaan di hai riyasat bwr da pakistan tey bahoon wadda ihsaan hai nawab sir muhammad sadiq khan abbasi ne qaid e azam kon rezraize car 72# ditti hai te hoon waqt ich 1 coror di khatir raqqam ditti hai te saudi arab maik abdu aziz all saud koon jehra hikk (khote)gadha te sawari karinda hai hekk car ditti has bwr de nawabaan ney 1061 saal dunyan te hukumat kiti hai (tariq sial uch sharitaalluq riyasat bahawal pur naal hai asadi f

References

• Asif, Saiqa Imtiaz. 2005. Saraiki Language and Ethnic Identity Journal of Research (Faculty of Languages and Islamic Studies), 7: 9-17. Multan (Pakistan): Bahauddin Zakariya University.
• Balfour, Edward. 1885. The cyclopædia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia: commercial, industrial and scientific, products of the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, useful arts and manufactures. Volume 3; Entry on "Multani Writing". London: B. Quaritch. Google Books view.
• Grierson, George A. 1919. Linguistic survey of India. vol. VIII, Part 1. Calcutta. Reprinted 1968 by Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi.
• HEC, Islamabad pakistn.Letter No. 20-/R7D/09 -5243 Dated 20-01-2010.
• Javaid, Umbreen. 2004. Saraiki political movement: its impact in south Punjab. Journal of Research (Humanities), 40(2): 55–65. Lahore: Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of the Punjab. (This PDF contains multiple articles from the same issue.)
• Masica, Colin. 1991. The Indo-Aryan languages. Cambridge University Press.
• Pakistan. 1998. Population and Housing Census of Pakistan.
• Rahman, Tariq. 1997. Language and Ethnicity in Pakistan. Asian Survey, 1997 Sep., 37(9):833-839.
• Shackle, C. 1976. The Saraiki language of central Pakistan: a reference grammar. London:School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
• Shackle, C. 1977. Saraiki: A Language Movement in Pakistan. Modern Asian Studies, 11(3):379-403.

Saraiki Download

Download Saraiki font & Keyboard (Seraiki/Saraika Phonetic)

Further reading

• Wagha, Ahsan (1990). The Saraiki Language: Its Growth and Development. Islamabad: Dderawar Publications. 
• Saraiki Language Culture and Society
• Saraiki language at Ethnologue
• Gardezi, Hassan N. (1996). Saraiki Language and its poetics: An Introduction. London: Sangat Publishers. 
• Latif, Amna. Phonemic Inventory of Saraiki Language and Acoustic Analysis of Voiced Implosives (PDF). Center for Research in Urdu Language Processing, CRULP Annual Student Report, 2002-2003.
• Rahman, Tariq. 1999. Language, education, and culture. Islamabad : Sustainable Development Policy Institute ; Karachi : Oxford University Press.
• Rahman, Tariq. No date. People and Languages in the Pre-Islamic Indus Valley. Hosted by the Asian Studies Network Information Center, University of Texas.
• Western Panjabi (Saraiki) Alphabet with Gurmukhi equivalents

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