@Indus Pakistan @Sine Nomine @fitpOsitive
Guys my two cents and please correct me where I am wrong, interesting research article but as is the case degrading in to petty squabbling. It's an established fact that the grammar of Urdu was made by a British captain (forgot the name), purpose of the same was to develop a language for easy communication between various ethnicities and languages. Unlike invaders from the west who imposed their languages on the local populace be it Persian, be it Turkish or any other the British amalgamated local variants, although it was already evolving, into one language again as an easier medium of exchange between various ethnicities.
There is no doubt about it even in that era punjabis did form a majority of the population of india facing the western frontier, that is why it was the language by default to be mixed with arabic/persian and turkish (pre dominantly)
@Indus Pakistan is absolutely correct that as you go east punjabi starts morphing into softer version and eventually to urdu. Hindi is the result of emerging hindu nationalism by Bala Jee and Shiva jee thus it has more sanskrit than arabic/persian or turkish for that matter. Compare any sentence of Hindi vs urdu the only difference will be the arabic/persian/turkish word with that of a sanskrit one.
Punjabis have always been at the forefront of every bloodshed brought in by successive invaders coming from the west over thousands of years, and this has made them more pragmatic/adoptable or gullible whichever way you want to put it.
As mentioned earlier even post partition in Pakistan Punjabis formed a major population group which had the same language, although I fail to find Punjabi prime minister/president till Zia however punjabis faced a multi pronged attack on their culture and language first Liaquat ali favorite urdu speaking bureaucracy, the bengalis later sindhis and Ghaddar Khan (its not a spelling mistake) and ilk. The Urdu speaking community covertly/overtly started ridiculing Punjabi as a language and started linking it with ill mannered people. While Sindhi, Pashto and baloch local languages are taught as a compulsory subject in respective provinces school, there is no where in punjab, punjabi is taught as a compulsory language in schools.
I have traveled across the globe and shamefully I accept that we punjabis are the only ones who have disowned their own language, nowadays if there is anyone who have kept punjabi language and culture alive are the sikhs of India. Yes we have been brainwashed into accepting our language as a lower one.
In Pakistan Punjabi is a dying language, every family deep in the heartland of Pakistani Punjab parents are trying to speak Urdu, I am afraid our own variant of Punjabi is being spoken by the last generation after that its urdu or english.
Perhaps it is the natural evolution as well, going through history of nations one finds that languages evolved and died out replaced by another one, a simpler version, I do not see a bright future for urdu either unless drastic steps are taken, children all of them school going hate urdu as a subject, mode of communication these days is social media and urdu alphabets are being replaced by english alphabets, may be we are looking at another Turkish type evolution.
Strange thing is every ethnic group can speak about their language/culture except Punjabis, am I wrong.
Children of today are not interested in reading about petty rivalry between Ghalib and Mir and their incomprehensible language, urdu too need a major transformation in the education sector to keep it alive.
Nutshell the fact is I am now Pakistani first then a Punjabi later, although the first language I learned was english along punjabi, although I am fully conversant with most of the varinats of punjabi still love a good pujbai song, but reality is that it will be gone as a language in a couple of centuries. Urdu is now my language and I have to accept it no matter how bitter a pill.
