The Pronunciation of Persian-origin Words among the Punjabi Speakers of Pakistan

Persian is a modern Iranian language which developed from Middle Western Iranian whichitself developed from Old Iranian, whereas Punjabi is the language of the region called‘Punjab’. It is a Persian word which literally means the land of five rivers . The Punjab wasdivided on the base of religion into Pakistan and India in 1947 during the partition of BritishIndia. The Punjabi is a Northwestern Indo-Aryan language which issued from Sanskritlanguage via Prakrit and Apabhramsh. It is the most spoken language in Pakistan. ThePersian and Punjabi both languages belong to Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-EuropeanLanguage family. The Punjabi language possesses a large quantity of Persian words beingused in this language since ancient times. This study investigates the pronunciation of thesePersian origin words present in the Punjabi language. We recorded and transcribed - inInternational Phonetic Alphabet - a list of these most common Persian loanwords articulatedby some of Punjabi speakers of Pakistan. We found a large difference between twopronunciations especially in vocalic category. We made the categories of thesepronunciation differences in order to understand how the Persian pronunciation of Punjabispeakers of Pakistan differs from modern standard Persian spoken in Iran. This study willhelp us to understand the cultural and linguistic relations between Iran and Pakistan.

Keywords:

Persian , Punjabi , Pakistan , Iran , Pronunciation